


Soul Of Our Hearts: An excerpt

by Congar



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:55:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 41,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26664034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Congar/pseuds/Congar
Summary: Monster Country, surrounded by the human countries Xoff and Hjearta, is undergoing a golden age of cooperation with the humans. The age of human magic has ushered in magic never seen before, stronger and more colorful than any monster could ever produce!However though, monsters are a key ingredient in human magic, as it is through gifted memories from a monster, a part of their soul, that a human is able to make magic. This idea of the Cooperative Connection has ventured into everyday life as well, with humans and monsters working together to shape a better future for all.A future that is spearheaded by the Monster Mages, powerful human mages who are considered monsters in all senses except physical. Employed by Queen Toriel and King Asgore and serving at the court of Jarasevo, the Monster Country capital, these Monster Mages are on the forefront of magical discovery and usage.Their goal is to discover the true nature of the human soul, named so after Prince Soulay, the first human capable of magic.The human soul, capable of magic in a vessel of blood and flesh.Follow Cter, the fourth Monster Mage, as she tries to figure out where her monster side ends, and her human side begins.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 1





	1. Soulay’s Academy for Humanities and Magical Studies for the Betterment of Monsterkind and Humanity

**Author's Note:**

> Just a slight note before reading:
> 
> This is a pick'n'mix of some random chapters that I've chosen mostly because how much I enjoyed writing them than any real coherent narrative. It's more to provide a few dots to outline the stuff that will be explored in the full story. 
> 
> I might add some more chapters should people have any questions that I have a chapter addressing and which isn't too spoilery, so feel free to leave a comment asking about either a character or a concept briefly shown.

Soulay’s Academy for Humanities and Magical Studies for the Betterment of Monsterkind and Humanity.

There was only one permanent place in the entire world where that name was written out in full, and that was above the entrance to its main building. Decided as such so that even the largest monsters could attend. The name was derived by both the Monster Royals as well as the monarchs of Hjearta. The unveiling took five humans and five multi-limbed monsters just to make sure the large purple and yellow colored fabric wouldn’t suffocate the audience as it fell. Afterwards it was raised as a proud banner in the lobby held up by its own weight-supporting column with magical ropes that hummed a calming light that warmed both monster as well as human souls.

Underneath the banner was the entrance to the main lecture hall named as such to contrast with cold logic against the varied emotions that were taught inside.

If you’d ask the walls inside the Main Lecture Hall they’d tell you of the magnificent displays and heartfelt lectures held within their boundaries. Even if you peeled back to look behind them you’d find the same. Just like the charred, cold, and stinging smell that were impossible to air out even after a wind-focused lesson the teachings had permeated the walls through the wooden planks and into the very foundation of the building. 

It was those walls that a wide and watery-eyed human once looked up on from her strewn parchments and papers. Her deep-green colors darted across the slits between the planks to maybe, just maybe, siphon some of the magic that’s just as much a metaphoric girdle holding up the weight of the importance the joint establishment meant for the world as it was a main ingredient to the mortar between the bricks behind the slits.

However, she could not ask the walls, despite her heart’s and soul’s desire leaking out of her tear ducts. 

For that would’ve been cheating. Two humans and one monster had already been thrown out for conspiring together via notes and leaning too much against the wall. A second monster had received a warning for trying to ask to be excused for the bathroom. Imitating a human’s voice and everything. It was understandable to a certain degree. The quivering in its voice that told about how it was so afraid and alone. Naked, almost. Not that it mattered to it physically, but emotionally it was just as flush with anxiety as a human would be if physically naked. 

In a way the humans were naked too with the final exam. No sleeve was allowed. No monster memories to warm the soul with comforting nostalgia that flushed the emotion-fueled magic traveling safely along the embroidered fabric. Only short sleeved uniforms given by the university were allowed during the exam for humans so that their soul and aura would stay inside them and them alone. Even with the nullifying effects it still bled out anxiety and hard-thinking panic into the room like steam escaping a slightly-ajar lid.

The steam from the rolling boil of worry boiling inside Cter’s pot almost lifted her up from her assigned seat.

“Two hours left,” informed the lizard monsters heading the exam. “Are there any questions?”

Yes, there was. Cter had many. So many! Tens! Hundreds! Thousands! But one loomed above her with such weight that she could only hold up her head with both her hands.

How was she supposed to answer the remaining four questions on this damn exam if it took her that long to answer just one?

The single scribbled answer that was most likely wrong, and became even less legible from the drops of tears that fell from the closed-up eyes as if rain from the cloud above her. Two hours left… The day before Cter had been in a slight state of quivering anxiety at the thought of spending five whole hours on a single exam. The fastest three hours in her life had then slipped by her faster than it would’ve done in her sleep. Two hours left with essentially the entire exam to do after her tears had fallen off, and she could see a mistake she made in her answer that was so obvious even she spotted it!

DAMMIT!

At least she could suppress her aura enough so that the entire hall wasn’t turning her way. If anyone would’ve looked or shifted their focus from the exam to her though she’d been screaming with her hand over her mouth. Be it eyes or focused aura-feeling, her distress was obvious. Had she not feared that she’d nullify the brilliance that’s accumulated inside the walls, Cter would’ve wished she’d melded inside them never to be found.

Maybe she’d find that one ghost monster that dropped the class early on inside, who knows?

And there her mind went wandering off away from the exam again. It was like her mind just shut down and wandered off leaving her to fend for herself with the questions. Everything Professor Leraull had said during the four years Cter spent under the his tutelage to become a mage pooled on the floor underneath her like leakage. She felt so sorry and so angry at herself as she again read through all of the questions in the fifth vague hope that this time it would be enough to stir her mind that was probably halfway to Xoff at that point. As her forehead hit the table with an audible impact Cter’s spine began tingling and curling in on itself as she felt the angry eyes and auras shoot at her for disturbing the others. Well deserved, she felt.

Could she have studied more? Yes. Was it possible for her to have studied more? No. All the fruits of her efforts have only allowed her to barely scrape by with each course. Cling on with the last digit on her little finger each and every single time. Worse still is that she enjoyed her time learning. Learning wasn’t what university was about though. Inside she could feel that she had the grips on the subjects, that her aura grew and that she could produce more complex magic, but showing it to others? That was where she failed. It wasn’t enough to just learn, she had to show others that she had learned too, and it was that which had her stumbling and only catching herself with the tip of her pinky.

The walls were closing in around her as Leraull informed the remaining monsters and humans that one hour remained with a voice that carried a slight melancholy to it as he let his gaze run across the students left. For a brief moment Cter lifted her head to show at least a semblance of composure, but that composure folded right back down as Leraull met her eyes. It didn’t take longer than that for her to realize that she’d wasted his time…

Another wave of disgust washed over her. The scaled lips that had smiled when she finally came into his office not to ask a rudimentary question, but to show that she could finally produce a fireball were now tugged back and thinned into a neutral frown held hard as to not fall into disappointment and resentment. That he held it towards her only furthered Cter’s heaving sigh down into her knees. Had he smiled her sigh would’ve sent all of her papers and parchments flying, so to that she was ever so grateful. 

It would’ve been enough to snuff out the small fireball she’d managed to produce a week or so before the exam. A week less than the four years it took for her to make something practical out of her magic where other human students were already juggling it with monsters after a year or so. Cter was a good ideas gal with the others since she didn’t have to think about her own weak aura and soul during those afternoons spent in the grassy fields with her course-mates discussing the day’s lessons. Making the others laugh as they fell apart trying to conjure up her suggestions did do good for her social circle and friendships, but not as good for her grades. It was her only way to get any grades at all. Secondhand learning. If she could make the monsters and humans around her smart then they could explain the lessons to her better.

One might even say that she was friendly out of necessity, and that did indeed keep her up a few nights after the end of some courses where she’d again be surprised that she had to actually demonstrate that she’d learned. Rubbing the pain out of pinky finger all the way up to her shoulder. Those nights she would again realize that the only reason she passed was that the others in her assigned group were compensating for her. She didn’t even drop the ball as she couldn’t even pick it up to begin with…

With the final exam though it was everyone for themselves. It was said at the introductory course, and repeated with each year, increasing in seriousness with each year that crept closer. The same words repeated by Leraull and written harder and harder on the blackboard with his mouth-controlled chalk.

“Learning human as monster and monster as human together to be able to express it together as human and monster. To further the future one must be able to express this cooperation firstly from within and then outwards with others.”

But just like how Soulay’s Academy for Humanities and Magical Studies for the Betterment of Monsterkind and Humanity was always abbreviated to Soul’s School so was the quote shortened to something actually useful.

“We’re together until the end. ‘And including’ comes from you.”

‘And including’ includes passing the final exam…

Cter, among the others in the lecture hall, shot their eyes over to the first monster standing up from the too small a seat given to its bee-like body as it tapped the papers with its answers together into a neat pile which it flew down with to Leraull’s table. With an approving nod from Leraull the bee was allowed to leave on good terms, and its overjoyed buzzing snuck inside the closing door and echoed between the walls. The sound was absorbed into the wood, becoming a permanent part of the building. 

“Half an hour left,” Leraull spoke just as a bear monster stood up. Ten seconds later a human did. Cter knew both of them, and for a brief moment she was just as overjoyed as the bee was that her friends stood up so casually and relaxed. The sudden discrepancy hit her directly afterwards though, and she again sighed down as quietly as she could without disturbing the students around her. Well, disturb them as little as possible, to be honest.

Should she just hand it in blankly instead of just making clumsy attempts at answers? Not to waste Professor Leraull’s time? She’d already done it for four years though so what’s another minute or so before he discards her dribble as the garbage it is!

Again the sparse writing she’d managed smudged into an unreadable whirl of ink as Cter’s head again slid down into her hands. She couldn’t even think past holding her aura in at that point. The last half an hour was to pass with Cter tensed both physically and mentally. All she wanted at that point was to go back to her room and...no, not even go back to her room. Just find a carriage that would take her home, and just go. Pass by her family that were half a week or so away from Soul’s School so that she could cry out in her old bed alone.

“Cter?”

She didn’t even have time to dry her eyes before she raised her head in reflex.

“Pick up your paper next to you, please.”

“S-sorry,” she answered meekly as she reached down to pick up the paper that she must have pushed down while she leaned down on her elbows. With a subdued sob she put the paper on top of the other blank ones and…

It took a couple of eye-wipes with her flowing robe before she began believing them. It was...it was answers. Not to all five, but to three at least. That would be enough for a passing grade. The answers seemed reasonable as well. Not that she’d known. Where did they come from? It’s not her handwriting, but Leraull addressed it as hers. None of the other students around her were looking for something either. Did it…

Did it come from the wall? 

The slits weren’t wide enough for a parchment to slip through without any sound or for it to be obviously visible. Magic then?

...Again...not that Cter would know…

It would be cheating though, wouldn’t it?

She wouldn’t be furthering the future if it wasn’t with her own answers. That’s why she wanted to become a mage to begin with. She didn’t know how difficult it would’ve been though, and she’s worked so hard but stumbled at the finish line. It wasn’t fair to her having made friends and progress only to be rejected because she offered herself to others more than she did herself, right?

No...it wasn’t right…

She was just trying to justify cheating!

“Fifteen minutes left!”

Fifteen minutes… It would take her at least ten to copy it all down onto her own parchments. Walls! What should she do? Answer her! From her very soul Cter pleaded with the walls that held so much knowledge and arcane wisdom. Of course she’d look panicked with fifteen minutes left on the exam that would determine her future! Surely other students had done the same as her, right? The walls had ears, but did they have a mouth as well? Did they have souls and hearts too that could bleed for a student down and almost certainly out.

Well, one out there was…

But again, could she even live with it? Outside as a mage she’d be alone. Would it even be worth risking being found out that she had obviously cheated if she couldn’t even conjure a proper fireball even with the amount of fire she’d brag about in her heart? She’d have a purple stamp and a signature on a piece of paper, yes, but she could wave that prestige around all day without as much as a second glance if she couldn’t dazzle with her magic to back it up.

But again again, she did have the answers written down already by someone else. Technically she had the knowledge necessary, it was just written by someone else. Like with course books? If not, then cooperation, like how all the courses had been about! Maybe it was a monster too that dropped it? One that passed by on its way out since it was finished. 

No, no, it was a human’s writing for the human questions. The monsters had different questions for their final exam. They already knew magic, and the humans already knew humanities. The humans went to Soul’s School to learn to view the world through a magical lens whereas the monsters attended to learn how to see the world through a humanities lens. One side helping the other throughout the years.

Cooperation.

This though, what Cter had in her hands. It was a different kind of cooperation. One not of helping to forge a new lens, but to see through another one’s lens. It was still Cter seeing it, right? It was still her writing down the answers on her own exam. Not someone else’s exam! It was her eyes through another one’s lens, so it was still hers!

Right?

“Ten minutes!”

Walls! Please say something!

…

No?

…

That’s an absence of ‘no’! That means ‘yes’, no?

…

Yes!

A different kind of aura began seeping into the slim slits as Cter practically threw herself over an empty parchment and began writing with a hand, arm, shoulder, torso, and head so tensed that when Professor Leraull finally ended the exam with a shimmering wave of magic that rolled up the designated answer parchments and sealed them up with a thinner rope glowing the same as the ones holding up the banner outside the lecture hall, Cter had to use her other arm to pick it up. 

She took her place at the end of the queue leading down the stairs between the rows of weathered seats with her heart still pounding like a drum. Looking down on her left arm twitching and turning a deep plum from the amount of blood in it she could do nothing else but to clench her teeth and try to keep her breathing and aura in check. As the queue neared Leraull bowing and wishing each student handing in their rolled-up scroll a good rest-of-the-day however, Cter felt her breathing and aura surge out from her more and more. Had it not been for the other humans being just as stressed-out as her she’d be the lone shout in the night instead of the lone shout in the middle of a busy market blending in with the others.

Three excruciating minutes later the large green chitin in front of her moved to the side, and as Leraull’s head angled up to meet the next student, Cter froze up. Her right hand clutched the rolled paper like herbs crushed to release their flavors. The way the scales on Leraull’s orange-brown forehead began to scrunch together into deep folds told that he indeed caught the whiff of something.

But of what?

He leaned forward over his desk, his thick tail raising behind him to counter his balance. The flat and half-circled spikes running from his head down his back looked sharp as spears as his eyes narrowed on Cter and his mouth opened slowly.

“It’s over.”

It’s…

It’s over…

No.

No!

She’s been found out!

He knows she cheated! He saw it! It was a trap! He knew Cter wouldn’t pass so he made a trap to make sure she was expelled and never to be allowed back for a re-exam!

Cter’s eyes again began watering, and her entire form heaved with each sob she tried so desperately to hold in behind her shut teeth exposed into a pained smile. In a way it was relieving. At least now she didn’t have to worry any longer that she’d be found out. 

Silver lining…

“It’s over,” Leraull repeated, but...softer? “I know it was difficult, but it’s over now. Give me your answers and enjoy the rest of the sun for today, okay?” Yes, definitely softer. The same voice he used to explain with smaller words to Cter what the day’s lesson was about. The same smile he’d have afterwards when she’d again apologize for not understanding. Again he would just smile back and say that he very much enjoyed those talks with her. Explaining something simpler means that one understands it better, so he learned something as well from their talks. “Just put it there next to the others, Cter.”

Others…

Was she...one of the others too now? One that had a chance to pass? One that could finally become a mage? Did...did she succeed? Did she?!

“Thank you, Pirra, and enjoy the rest of your day,” Leraull said to the monster behind Cter reaching over her with one of its furred arms and putting its answers onto the pile held neat and upright by Leraull’s magic. Without even sending the thought to her arm to move Cter placed her own answers on the pile. Her eyes followed the movement of her arm as if it wasn’t her own. As if it was just copying what the monster had done before her. It was an alien feeling, but not as alien as what began radiating from the empty feeling in her hand.

Hope.

Happiness.

Pride!

Relief!

“Thank you, Cter, and enjoy the rest of your day.”

She nodded.

And stood there.

Until Leraull gently nodded to the side to get her moving.

Which she did.

As the lecture hall doors swung to a close behind her Cter again looked down on her left hand. Its plum color had subsided to her more pale hue shared with the rest of her body besides her blossoming cheeks, which then were blossoming more than she’d ever felt them do. All the way into her chest, into her soul and heart. She didn’t need an inscribed sleeve to feel the overwhelming joy flow out to her hands which she clutched hard and threw above her as high as she could. “YES!” she screamed alone, her voice echoing throughout the large lobby and almost causing the enormous banner to flap with her shout.

It didn’t take long before her skin again took upon a reddened hue the same as her flaring cheeks. The embarrassment crashing against the inside of her bones like flu had her arms falling down her sides and slapping her thighs hard. Perplexed monsters and humans from both the lobby and exiting the lecture doors from behind passed her by with craned-back necks, those who had.

Another lone voice rung out from across the lobby with a sarcastic “Whoo!” which prompted several similar ones, and some genuine ones to boot. Most likely monsters and humans who’d also taken the final exam that day. It passed just as quickly as it began though, and as the final sarcastic cheer died out after misjudging the energy of the lobby, Cter felt control return to her body. With that she allowed herself to smile again, a smile that wouldn’t leave her until the day after, even throughout the night.

For that’s when the results came back from the final exam.

And even worse…

When her family arrived early to share it with her.


	2. Wearing your influence on your sleeve

“Come on, Cter! Open it up!”

“Yes! Yes! We’re all so excited!”

“I betcha you got the highest grade!”

“I have a pair of scissors if you need.”

The smooth and ornate ribbon on the rolled parchment holding within it the future of the simple girl from the simple village four and a half days travel from Soul’s School was scrunched as the simple girl from the simple village four and a half days travel from Soul’s school clenched it between her finger turning pale...more pale...as a bolt of cold shot up the length of her straightening spine. Given to her right hand by Professor Leraull with a winking smile that haunted her for the few minutes that passed afterwards with her entire family holding their collective breath underneath the canopy of an aspen whispering in the faint breeze a short walk from the murmur in the grassy field outside of Soul’s School. The fresh blend from King Asgore’s donated garden could still be smelled even with the large school building in the way.

Cter hadn’t even noticed that she held her future in her non-dominant hand, but as she realized it from hurriedly throwing up her empty left hand waving limply to halt her mother’s digging through her rucksack for a pair of scissors it started to feel a bit...wrong. Shouldn’t she be holding it in her arm she was used to, well, use? 

The sudden inquisitive thought born out of her mind juggling more than an octopus monster working as a court jester was halted as abrupt as said jester realizing that he’d forgotten his balls. Gently dragged over her raised hand by her monster grandmother was a felt sleeve made from sheep’s wool. Faint arcane lines were inscribed upon the fabric, traveling across, around, and straight up the sleeve with a subtle shining white. “Hold up your arm a bit, child,” grandma Romrom asked with a proud smile as the sleeve fit like a glove. The glove part especially. “And you others,” she addressed the rest of her human family behind her. “Make sure none of those boys can peek between you.” Her commanding words held sway over almost as many humans as King Asgore and Queen Toriel did as she…well...not really ruled over her village as it would’ve caused some scathing political discourse between the human kingdom of Hjearta having some of its land being ruled over by a monster, but in all sense of the word except the serious, grandma Romrom ruled over her village. She did so with wisdom and warm smiles generously serving food though, so the usurpation of human land was subdued by hearty stews and motherly words.

Her human family, on the other hand. “No, not that one, Cter. Your left, I mean, still. I gotta make sure it’s fastened properly.” That family knew that underneath the motherly exterior burnt a soul of the wildest fire. Crackling like a human-made fire with the intensity and color of a monster-made one. If there was as much as an outside glance glancing against her precious Cter on her most precious day of days with great weather and even greater company they’d have to sit on top of the carriage home with a colander instead of a magical umbrella since it would cover them just as much as they did Cter on her graduation day.

After an acknowledging hum from her graying beak that the wall of humans seemed robust enough Romrom then continued with fastening her sleeve weaved both with wool and her own memories as the catalyst. “Is it not too tight over your palm and arm?” she asked the same way she did about which pie Cter wanted when she was little. From the outset making it sound like Cter had a choice, but once she spared a thought on the tone she knew Romrom had already decided for her. With a careful eye that had to move close to see properly, Romrom brushed away some excess wool and linen on the rounded symbol with a feathered thumb. She allowed herself a snicker as to the part of her memory she attached to the hand. Cter will surely appreciate it, that Romrom knew.

“Now, Cter,” Romrom spoke while stretching straight the rest of the sleeve. “I’ll show you how to easiest fasten your sleeve. Take off your robe.” Cter did so after first huffing at her cousin making an audible grin. At least his head was facing away. Mostly for his own sake. “Begin with the strap across your torso,” Romrom instructed while gently pulling on the leather strap bolstered with linen and wool for future comfort. Not immediate comfort as the first time it touched Cter’s bare skin it was very itchy. It was still leagues better than the lent sleeves from Soul’s School which were just pure, cheap leather that became sweaty and smelly after extensive use during the day. 

The chafing was almost as bad as the studies during the early autumn and late spring days, even for the humans which were smart enough to keep the straps on the outside of their undershirts. It was easy to tell which ones did put in the thought not to chafe themselves. Apart from the complaining and red stripes across the skin, the ones that strapped over their undershirt had the human half of the school’s symbol slowly rubbed away from the friction. While it did bring up a bit of discussion about whether it was on purpose or not or maybe that it paralleled the human learning more about monsterkind it mostly served as a way for Cter to pick out the students that had been at the school longer and therefor had a bigger chance of helping her with her studies. 

Romrom must’ve read between the lines of the letters Cter sent home. Maybe not how Cter imagined how it would’ve been read, but she was not gonna correct her grandma about it. That Cter wrote ‘The symbol on my undershirt given to me by the school is being scraped away faster than any other student’ instead of ‘I tug and tug on the strap all the time because even if I reread the homework ten times in a row I still don’t understand it’ might be obvious now with the answer literally in her right hand and the impact of it covering her left arm, but at the time when she wrote it after hours upon hours of straight studying it sounded good in her head that it’d be taken the right way.

“You have to be careful with nestling the strap between your...” Romrom’s voice trailed off as to not further the grin from the cousin almost bouncing with snickering. “You know,” she said with a sigh hearing the snickering escape slightly from behind her dark fur. “As you see I’ve padded with a bit more wool so that it won’t chafe. I’ve heard stories from some of the mages passing by our village, and when you pass by later I want you to tell about your travels, not your ailments, Cter.”

“Thanks,” Cter replied with a surprising amount of sincerity and relief. While she didn’t experience hurt from the chafing from the school’s straps they did bring her some discomfort as it began sliding after becoming sweaty even outside the undershirt. Honestly, who in their right mind would’ve put it as a first layer except for their arm? Even stranger than some of the monsters Cter met in the hallways between classes.

“The strap then continues around and up your back and goes through this opening at the top of your shoulder blade where you can tighten it on the front and tuck the rest of the strap underneath this hoop.” Romrom then offered to show Cter how it worked. She pulled the strap through the sewn hole. “Easier to unbuckle if it is on the front.” And then pulled it tight.

Cter coughed from the strap slipping and burrowing underneath her rib cage and squishing her organs like a bagpipe. Even the low standards for music that passes through a bagpipe was a royal symphony compared to her cough.

“You’re not killing my daughter, I hope, Romrom?” came a quirked remark from the largest man in the faced-away wall of ten humans. “Again?”

“It’s fine,” Cter said with the lingering air still inside her. Her deep and guttural inhale afterwards didn’t really support her case though as she bent over and accidentally slipped the strap out of her sleeve’s shoulder. “Sorry,” she muttered through her inhale but was only pushed up straight by a sighing Romrom reaching over almost like a hug to catch the strap again. Not even the slightest acknowledgment of Cter’s apology was uttered as Romrom adjusted the strap to rest on Cter’s ribs again.

“You’ve not eaten a lot during your studies, have you?” was instead uttered bordering on a disappointed scold. With her long tail feather Romrom tapped her adopted child, Cter’s mother, on the shoulder, and was handed the rucksack without either the sender or the receiver looking at the other. “Good thing your father dared to convince me to bring with me my sewing kit,” Romrom said into the rucksack as she began rummaging in it with one feathery hand while keeping the strap straightened with her other via her thumb between the tightest hole for the buckle and the actual buckle itself.

“I just reminded you just in case you put too much of your memories inside the sleeve, Romrom.” The playful remark earned him an equally playful swipe of Romrom’s tail feather across his neck to tickle him while she poked another couple of holes in the strap. He held it together though, but only barely.

“Is it comfortable now?” Romrom asked Cter while buckling the strap into one of the new holes she made. After some rolling of her shoulder and pushing back and forth with her opened palm, away from Romrom and her family, naturally, Cter concluded that no, it wasn’t comfortable. It was more comfortable than the school’s sleeve, but it was still slipping a bit on her shoulder. Romrom could tell from Cter’s furrowed expression, so she then went back into her rucksack like a child into its yule stocking. “Then it might need a bit more tension,” she concluded to herself between her mumbling before exclaiming happily as she found something suitable. “Aha!”

Presented inside the dark, feathered hand was a collar which Romrom quickly said to be a leather necklace to brighten the idea. “It’s a strip left from when I sewed your sleeve. I think it might fit around your neck.” After a quick measurement which Cter didn’t even bother to try protesting against Romrom found a measurement where to cut it. A quick snip later with the scissors that finally found a use she motioned kindly for Cter to sit down which she did between two of the aspen’s large roots.

“I’ll be careful,” Romrom assured while showing a needle and another strip of wool-lined leather. “Just sit still, child.” Her words were so soft and soothing that not even Cter’s father quirked a question as to exactly why Romrom had to be careful. “You’ll find something nice to put in the necklace for me, right?”

Cter nodded.

“Sit still,” Romrom repeated.

...Right. How quickly Cter forgot about that. 

Just like how she also forgot the scroll in her right hand. She almost flinched as she looked down at her hand still clenched without her knowledge, but caught herself just before moving. Always was a bore when you’d bleed on your magic sleeve given to you by your loving monster grandma before you could cast your first spell with it. 

She was to open it in front of her family, and the thought brought her no comfort. The thought of Professor Leraull’s winked smile wasn’t enough to soothe her. If anything it raised the anxiety as Cter wondered if he was winking because of something else enough to nullify the relief from him saying that she had passed without saying it out loud. 

Most likely though she was worried about how her family would react. She didn’t know how high their expectations were, but with the fact that Romrom already had made a sleeve for Cter inscribed with memories it was safe to assume that the expectations were at least taller than Cter herself casting shadows of doubt over her blending together with her own shadows of doubt that were just as dark, if not darker, than Romrom’s fur. With the way she cheated too yesterday…

“Cter?” Romrom inquired carefully as she felt her granddaughter’s shoulder began tensing. She lifted her eyes from the thread melding with the fabric of the same color to see the troubled expression on Cter’s face quivering. Quickly she lifted up the flap of the sleeve’s shoulder to make sure that she hadn’t accidentally stabbed Cter. Romrom was always careful, how could she have done this? To her own granddaughter!?

But there was no blood which only furthered Romrom’s confusion. It shifted away from her thought and towards the now sobbing human. “Grandchild?” Her soft feathers stroking Cter’s flushing cheek had the human leaning away and covering it up, but it was too late. “You’re blossoming, Cter.” A telltale sign that Cter was upset. Her cheeks went from fair and red to blossoming crimson as her emotions took her over. “What’s the matter?” Romrom’s eyes were drawn down to the scroll in Cter’s hand almost imploding from the pressure were they softened with grandmotherly understanding. “Oh, my dear Cter.”

It only took another audible sob for the wall of humans to turn around towards the distress, emphasis hard on the stress. Romrom waved them all over to help comfort, and a moment later Cter was enveloped by arms both big and small around her. At the same time she wanted to hug back as she needed strength and to push them all away as she didn’t deserve to receive it. She could only nestle herself onto the largest elbow-bend and wait for someone to say something.

After a silent minute it was her mother that spoke. “Whatever is in that scroll we’re gonna be proud of you, child. You don’t need a stamp to be our mage, Cter. Romrom’s given you your first mage sleeve, and that’s all that matters. You’ve already graduated in our eyes. In our windows to our souls you’re a mage, and that will never change.” Her words trailed off as she leaned in to kiss her eldest child on its troubled head.

“As always your mother speaks for me too, kid,” Cter’s father chimed in inappropriately planned. The pile of humans and monster scoffed a collective chuckle, and as if by magic not yet understood, the weight on Cter’s shoulders were lifted. “Don’t think for a second that we’re not proud of you, okay?”

“Okay,” Cter answered weakly. It was an answer though, more than she thought she could muster. The callused farmer thumb drying her eyes was as soothing as it was rough, and she leaned into her father’s hand with her cheek so that he could take away some of her cheek’s heat like he did before.

“Promise?” 

Like when she promised that she’d study hard?

“I promise.”

Seems that way.

“You don’t have to open it if you don’t want to,” said Romrom as she nodded for the humans to disperse. “However,” she added while gently angling up Cter’s chin. “I do want to you to show us some magic and see if the memory I gave you is compatible.” With her other hand she gingerly tugged at the scrunched scroll, which rolled like a tear out of Cter’s grasp and into the awaiting dark feathers. “They are some very special memories that I’m sure will help you along your journey.” As if folding a sleeping baby over its chest, Romrom gave Cter’s sleeved arm back to her with a peck on her forehead. “How about an ice sprite in this hot weather?”

Cter had never done ice, only fire. She knew how to make one, in theory, but she only managed to conjure fire before. That was with a school sleeve though. With memories that she wasn’t connected to. Perhaps with Romrom’s she’d have better luck?

“I’ll try, grandma.”

“You’ll try, grandchild.”

Romrom helped Cter up on her feet again before taking a step back and joining the rest of the family to observe the magic. They all waited patiently as Cter studied the lines on her enchanted sleeve to get an idea of how her magic would travel along it. After making an approximate mental map in her head she closed her eyes and focused inwards. A few long and deep breaths later the familiar wave of awareness began flushing through her like the imaginary lake she was taught to conjure up in her mind before she would any magic. The waves now only had to reach her toes buried in the beach where she stood in her mind for her to recognize that she was more aware instead of necessitating it crashing over her fully. 

The magical awareness made physical through her soul.

The strap running across her torso and back tugged just the slightest as her soul touched the magical fabric over the left side of her chest where she let the culmination of her magical being slowly assert itself outside her body. There were gasps dragged around her from her family, but her calm and collective focus stopped her family from becoming anything more than surprised. She could feel their eyes upon her soul even with it being underneath the chest-covering of her grandma’s gifted sleeve. Their intent was that of curiosity and pride, radiating from their natural aura like the warm sun above in the sky. Romrom’s was the most curious one, and Cter let her grandma’s aura carefully caress her soul. A memory flashed inside Cter’s mind as Romrom’s aura gently cupped at her soul. Of Cter as a baby. The first time Romrom held her inside her feathered arms.

Now it was the first time Romrom held her grandchild’s soul, and just as careful and filled with wonder did she do the same. “Cter...” she whispered through her choked words. “You’re so...” She embraced her grandchild’s soul in a magical hug, and her emotions flushed into Cter. “You’re so much like a monster.” Cter made her soul fluster, blossom as much as her cheeks did. She could almost imagine it visible with how much it just...felt. She couldn’t imagine how much it was to her monster grandma though. “Thank you so much for sharing this with me.”

Cter chuckled at her grandma’s quavering voice teetering on giving in and collapsing in tears. She did it with as much love as she was given though, for it was just as Professor Leraull said during one of his lessons. The first time a monster sees, and more importantly, feels a human soul that is related to it, be it a year-long friendship or familiar bond, is an event comparable to a human mother holding her newborn for the first time. It is opening a door that the monster could never imagine to be opened. To feel and to connect with a human magically. A touch that’s more than physical to a being of magic. A second sun, almost. Love and hope that’s an ocean to a monster lake.

And Cter is just as blessed sharing it as Romrom is being shared to.

“Now, Cter,” Romrom whimpered with joy. “Let us see your magic.”

With Romrom releasing Cter’s soul to exist on its own there became an emptiness of sorts left inside her. A strange one that was as curiously strange and uncomfortable as the first time she experienced it. She had to fill it with the want to still be whole despite separating herself into two. One physical and one magical. Unraveling and making two out of the one that was her. Her body and soul, made discrete from being continuous, while still being dependent on the other. It was the first and most important thing taught to the humans at Soul’s School, and something that was so ferociously hammered into the students that even Cter picked it up without help.

The need to stay determined.

Because otherwise there could be no magic from a human.

Cter called upon the comforting nostalgia only distant memories could bring as she recalled the way she felt when she set off to join Soul’s School. The drive she had that would move her forward through her courses despite the difficulty. It swelled from a point inside the emptiness to an engulfing filling that asserted itself over the emptiness via the smiles and hopeful waving her family showered over her as she walked towards the awaiting carriage.

The same family that now stood in front of her waiting eagerly. They’d waited for years! She’d not disappoint them! She’d wouldn’t!

She was determined not to!

The rekindled awareness began as a tickling sensation over her chest where her soul made contact with the chest piece of her sleeve. It probed the inscribed memories given by Romrom, looking for the starter memory where Cter could connect herself. It didn’t take long as almost all of the memories her grandma had enchanted into the fabric was of the two together.

There were some lines though which felt...distant. Memories before Romrom even knew about Cter? Memories from her youth? They were hazy and incoherent to Cter.

For the moment.

Cter chose a memory of Romrom and her bathing in their village’s lake as the initial sensation of cold as they first entered the recently-melted spring water would be helpful in understanding how the small part of Romrom’s soul present in the memories reacted to it.

And then made to act to it.

Made to act via Cter’s soul. Fueling the small sensation with her intent and emotion along the memories on her sleeve until she could project and conjure it.

“Along the thick line first until it branches off into that fork and then along the one wrapping underneath the arm as it seems better for ice magic with its harder angles since it reminds of a snowflake which will help associate with cold as a primer and…”

A slight chortle broke her focus. Cter looked up to the amused faces of her family, realizing that she was muttering to herself. She dragged an uncomfortable smile as she felt the awkwardness take her over. The sudden change made a small spurt of misty ice shoot out of her glove with a sound very similar to a forced fart. The shimmering mist hung in the air for a couple of long seconds before evaporating as Cter balled her fist so hard it almost broke her fingers.

“...”

The rapidly shifting shadow from her soul slurping back into her tensed body frozen more solid than any ice she could ever produce if she hadn’t gotten cold feet in the wrong sense made her smile morphing from trying to look confident to giving up on being confident with the grace and delight as a Snowdrake’s first repertoire a bit of an avalanche of petering self-consciousness now continuous again with her soul back inside her.

“That was incredible, Cter!”

It...was?

“Was that your soul? It looked...it looked like something I’d never seen before!” her mother exclaimed reservedly, as if held back by her own tongue wanting to say something else. Her face relaxed into contemplation as her tongue’s want spread over her like a veil. “It...felt like I’d seen it before, but that I hadn’t at all at the same time.” She looked to both her sides for confirmation from her family, and they all nodded in agreement.

All except Romrom.

“It felt...it felt like you, Cter,” her mother continued while shifting her body and hands impatiently, almost frustratingly. It was clear that she had trouble finding the right words to describe her thoughts. “Like it was you, but another form of you.” She again looked to both her sides for confirmation that she wasn’t the only one thinking this strangely. This time she rested her eyes on her monster mother. “How was it to you?”

Romrom entire body heaved with her sigh of content. “Like it was the first time I’d ever seen my grandchild.” With feathery arms stretched wide she again enveloped Cter with love and care. Physical arms instead of magical, but with just as much radiating pride. “Don’t worry about that magical petering of yours,” she reassured with an encouraging tussle of Cter’s hair. “I did the same in my youth.”

The way Romrom said ‘youth’ sounded...strange. Like Cter was supposed to react to it someway. With Romrom holding her eyes and slowly raising her brow as if waiting for something Cter felt her own brow lower as she began searching her mind for what it could mean.

“Not your memories, Cter.”

Not hers?

Then…

The human lifted her sleeved left arm to inspect it again. Could it be? The hazy memories she felt? Was it Romrom’s from when she was young?

After gently prying open her grandchild’s fingers to expose the glove inside, Romrom let a swirl of snowy magic collect in her palm forming a diamond of clear ice that was as black as her fur and feathers. Her gray beak was distorted through the slowly spinning magic as she let it travel from monster palm to human palm. “Seek out Krygino once you arrive. He’s an old friend of mine, as you will see. We’ve already arranged transport for you, Cter. It’s there you will learn more than you could ever do here.” 

Before Cter could say something in return, the cold she tried to emulate came rushing up her arm. Her soul again flustered as Romrom’s piece of soul reacted to its original magic. The embroidered memories of Cter and her monster grandma became as clear as if they were happening all at the same time. The hazy memories cleared up like the sun piercing through thick mist, and Cter found herself as a young monster turning her blackly, fluffed head around her black-feathered shoulder to the large and magnificent nest she had decided it was time to leave from.

Away from the humble houses of the city’s outer ring built by humans to house humans. A sign of a changing time that Romrom decided she was to do the same with in a human country instead. From her home at the bottom of the large hill standing proud in the middle where she’d grown up among monsters with the occasional human around. From the way those humans had brought such playfulness and new ways of looking at life with just their presence and passing by Romrom decided she’d become the same for a human country. She’d travel to Hjearta and find her future among humans.

Her neck craned up one last time towards the glistening castle on the hill where she’d send her children to visit one day. She’d foster a mage through a monster’s parenting.

The marble walls upon the hill blinded her as the sun peeked out from behind a cloud, and Cter opened her own eyes to see the same monster she suddenly found herself as standing in front of her with a smile from the beak fading in color.

“Jarasevo...” Cter spoke, her own voice sounding strange to her for a moment before remembering who she was.

Romrom nodded.

“The Monster Capital.”


	3. Oh well, what is a royal ball, really?

Jarasevo castle.

On the hill that overlooked the Monster Capital like a lighthouse both in day and night. A monument by both human and monster definition how it stood taller than tall. It was said that it was more robust than the bedrock that elevated it as it was raised by Monster Royals past in a display so splendid it would radiate off the marble walls for hundreds of years to come!

One would be hard-pressed to deny that legend upon seeing how smooth it was. Like a single block of marble hollowed out with windows and doors placed without as much as a nail of hinge to hold them in place. Like they were there when the stone was birthed. Like it was there when all time began.

And not a single day shown as age on it.

It had stood longer than any human castle. Its Royal Lineage stretching further back in time than any human equivalent could claim. Each Queen and King still lived on inside its wall even after their reign was over. Their auras lingered like the gentle smell of fresh pastry outside a bakery, and just as enticing. They were respectful about the current monarchs though, not speaking up or making their presence known as their time to reign was over. They were a part of the castle, and the castle was there to aid the Monster Royals, and the Monster Royals were there to protect their land and souls.

During the day it would be like a second sun to its surrounding subjects to remind them that they had nothing to fear in life, shining clear as day even while the darkest of clouds hung heavy above both head and soul. It would happen that the towers would slice through the clouds like a knife through hot butter so that the necessary rain would move in predictable patterns. The many roads that led out from Jarasevo bent to follow the sliced clouds. From the top of one of the towers one could see the swirling pattern of villages and farms disappearing over the horizon. It was never truly known if the towers’ impact on the rain was intentional or not, but the resulting prosperity was never questioned.

During the night the radiance wouldn’t shine in a way that would hinder sleep. No, instead it would warm the souls of its monsters and humans like a second, magical blanket. It would be like a warm mother’s hand stroking the foreheads to help drift safely and quickly drift off to sleep. All that had met the Queen would recognize her hand as the one that would help them sleep. Even the Royal Guard stationed at night would feel the Queen’s security envelope them like a cloak. They would speak of feeling the Delta Runes on their armor shining like candles for their souls.

Inside the halls would be grand, and more importantly, make everyone that walked them feel just as grand. From the smallest of Whimsum that would feel like it was as large and respectful as King Asgore, to the largest of griffons that would never feel their wide wings grind against the walls. Welcoming to all, the castle was, with both heart and soul opened to those who would visit. Be it human or monster. Each one would give a piece of themselves to the castle, which would give them a piece of itself. Thus the Monster Royals had both the council of Monster Royals past and the council of humans and monsters alike at their disposal. It made everyone feel welcomed as they would feel their own kin walking side-by-side with them.

And where wouldn’t they go, if not the Royal Garden?

A place filled with such life and color that even the rainbow was enticed by it. Each time the rain would past it was seen nestling into the many flowers and trees, both human and monster. The Golden Flowers would glisten and shimmer like gemstones whenever the rainbow sat itself so patiently to smell the roses. Roses just as colorful as it was. Always in bloom, held opened and alive by magic. The King’s magic, to be exact. It was the Prince’s first magical lesson and duty, to keep the garden as alive as he wanted his subjects to be when he ascended to the throne. With each new Prince the now King would encourage the Royal Garden to grow as much as the Prince would. As much as the Monster Country would when he would become the new King. Whereas in human culture it was custom to give flowers as a gift to the Queen, for the Monster Royals it was snatched out of the delegate's hands by the King or Prince to go plant in the Royal Garden before the Queen could even begin to explain that she was not the one to receive the flowers. 

Because of that there were always humorous whispers about the trees in the Royal Garden and whether or not the Prince or King were running through the halls of the castle with an entire tree over their shoulder. Perhaps even the two helped each other, with the King for the crown and the Prince for the trunk? Those hushed giggles as to not to offend the hospitality were often heard between the leaves and vines to the delight of all that could hear. 

Even the King and or Prince.

For it was because of their effort that the garden did blossom, and that their kingdom did as well. Otherwise the Queen and or Princess wouldn’t have somewhere to go and enjoy tea which she so much deserved. Nowhere except the most beautiful place in the country which could still never match her beauty.

In stark contrast to the hushed giggles there would ring out a loud and sarcastic guffaw instead when the Queen and or Princess heard of the reason. Perhaps if that was the truth, the King and or Prince could let the Queen and or Princess get a glimpse of said flowers before being snatched out of hers hands?

The Echo Flower patch were often crowded to relive those moments. With hushed giggles, of course. Boss Monster aura wasn’t so easily persuaded out of an Echo Flower, which brought great amusement to an already splendid garden. The laughter helped with fertilizing, so it was by the Queen and or Princess order that the Echo Flower patch would never be overwritten.

Until the next generation of Monster Royals, that is.

The legacy of all previous Monster Kings blossomed in the garden all year round for all that visited the castle to enjoy.

And those who would visit would always want to leave. Not due to the lack of hospitality nor the sense of inferiority that would seldom be inflicted, yet quickly pushed away. All that visited would want to leave so that they could see the world with the new perspective gained from Jarasevo Castle. Of its splendor, culture, food, beds, guards, Monster Mages, and finally Royals. To sing from the bottom of their soul all the wonders they felt nothing but privileged to experience. How could they not? How could they not want to dance down the hill with each and every monster hand in hand, claw, paw, tentacle, bone, whatever they had! To dance and sing from the bottom of their soul so flustered with joy and pride. Joy from the memories they would never forget. Pride from the Monster Royals having entrusted with this joy and memories without a second’s hesitation.

The cobblestone up towards the castle had ingrained dots on them. Tears, it was said to be. Tears of the ones that danced and sung down the hill, irrigating the lifeless stone underneath their bouncing feet with their happiness and unending laughter. Dresses swayed like the golden fields of wheat during a warm summer’s breeze. Hats twirling in the air as if never to fall down again. Shoes which percussion would echo throughout the many alleyways to let everyone know of the festivities.

All of this went through Cter mind as she entered through the large gate that was just as much swallowing her up as it was inviting her in. The letter in her hand she brandished just to the side of her catching breath so that it wouldn’t moisten and stain.

Half an hour later her hands were filled of her hanging cheeks with her elbows resting on her knees as she sat sighing on a bench overlooking the city. The glistening walls behind her tingled at her neck, but to her it was as a rash. Not even the view from where she sat she could appreciate.

All she could do, and did, was sigh.

Because really, what did she expect?

She knew beforehand how all those stories about the Jarasevo castle couldn’t possible be true. How it was more fluff than the fur of the Monster Royals. Not as much painting with vivid colors as it was throwing the paint in her face every single time someone would add to the increasingly unbelievable description of the castle. About roaming auras from previous Monster Kings and Monster Queens. About Echo Flower patches spouting embarrassments about the royals to amuse visitors, prying open for political soft spots that could be abused.

And human and monsters dancing down the hill after having visited?

She sighed again.

Perhaps she was a bit cynical at the moment, but it wasn’t really a feeling she felt she could blame herself for feeling. She’d walked, not danced, up the large hill for what felt like hours to deliver a letter. That she was allowed to do. Not to the actual recipient, as was said to her:

“The Monster Mages don’t take in apprentices.”

Which would’ve been well enough for Cter to catch the hint that what she sought wasn’t to be found in Jarasevo castle, but with what the Royal Guard added as Cter told him that Kry had spoken to her just an hour or so ago she could really had done without.

Even if she knew from her very heart and soul that it was true…

“We know of you, Cter. We’ve known of your travels since when you first crossed the border near The Flipping Heart. Kry makes sure that none of you humans are a threat to monsterkind, especially if the first thing you do is traveling straight towards the capital. Double that, if not triple, if you’re calling yourself a human mage.”

“But Kry told me...” Cter whispered as meekly alone on the bench as she did against the dog monster quirking a tall eyebrow over his beady eye. His panting to keep cool in the blazing summer heat stopped as Cter managed to collect her words enough to make them audible. It was luck that the guard had sharp hearing, otherwise he wouldn’t have heard it despite the wispy echo that the large, marble entrance produced. “But Kry told me I was a human mage...”

The Royal Guard then sighed just as tiredly and drained of emotion as Cter did afterwards. He reached over for a document across his wooden desk softly lit by a candle. He pierced the parchment with a claw and handed it over to let Cter read for herself. It was almost as if the guard was giving praise that she could even read to begin with. “Kry’s report of you. Would you like a copy to bring with you? Won’t take long since...” Another wispy echo bounced all around Cter as the guard inhaled through his clenched teeth with both eyebrows raised over his widened eyes from raisins to grapes. “Well, you know.”

Cter did.

The moment she saw the supposed report about her.

All of five lines.

With three about her.

‘Knows magic. Knows might be too strong a word.’

‘Couldn’t even look me in the eyes despite believing I wasn’t a mage.’

‘Accidentally encouraged due to relief that I didn’t have to do anything more to assess.’

Wait… Four lines.

‘Dismiss immediately if she’s to visit the castle due to that.’

It was not of Cter to cry in public. Her aura though poured like a waterfall, which washed over both the Royal Guard she was talking too as well as the ones standing straight with disciplined distances between them along the length of the castle entrance. All turned their head towards the human exhaling ruggedly. There was a hefty silence following, with none knowing what to actually do to salvage it. 

“Would you like a copy?” the sitting guard repeated from the other side of his desk which did nothing to shield him from Cter’s leaking aura. She shook her head weakly, and let the parchment fall back onto the table before she turned away with a choked sob. “There is a bench out the right and a minute’s walk if you want a place to sit and think,” the guard offered to Cter’s back as she neared the door.

She nodded. She didn’t know why she did, but it was something she felt she had to do. Had to accept the help even if she knew it was just to get her out of there. She didn’t feel like crying either. If anything she was too shocked to cry. Too confused about how to take anything right now. The human she thought not to be a mage turned out to be one of the most powerful ones. She praised her by accident and didn’t really mean it. She was told she was destined for something more from a monster’s hunch which was the same hunch he had with Queen Toriel but she was turned away at the literal gate.

Cter had to sit down for a while. Not only because of her legs again, but because of…

Just everything. Her mind was a mess. On top of that she felt it clashing with what she felt from her grandmother’s memories inside her sleeve. The picture, be it as hazy as it was, of Jarasevo wasn’t at all what Cter had experienced. That was sure to cause some friction the next time she was to summon magic.

If she even wanted to after today.

With a tug and simultaneous sob Cter tugged loose her strap holding her sleeve’s chest-covering, loosening it and throwing it out of her undershirt and robe. 

This was it…

This was as far Cter could push reality until it caught up with her. Until the consequences of her cheating on the final exam left her stranded alone in another country with nowhere to go. Where should she go? Where could she go? She knew nobody! What would the tavern owner say if she came back and told him that his hunch was wrong. That…

She didn’t know… She didn’t know what to say.

She didn’t know anything.

No monster.

No human.

And no magic.

Nothing that could help her.

Should she just try and get home? With what money? She would only have enough to the border if she decided to. And then? Then she’d be back in her human country where she wouldn’t have the advantage of being a human that...had grounds to maybe produce magic. She wasn’t a farmer’s girl. She didn’t know a craft. All Cter knew was how to study, and look where that got her! 

Throughout her self-aimed and self-afflicted curses she held her hand tightly around her sleeve, but never ripped it off. There was still a comforting familiarity to it that she needed. Romrom’s vague and distant presence was comforting. Cter could probe the magic with her eyes closed and imagine that her grandma was holding her hand. Just vaguely though.

Her torso folded forward as she began crying, her shoulders and back heaving with each choking sob. The cobble underneath her was irrigated like the embellished stories told, but not of the tears of joy the rumors boasted about. Only tears of a human truly lost. Physically, mentally, spiritually, and magically. Indulging herself in the last sliver of home that she could vaguely call as such. “I miss you,” she sobbed. “All of you.” She squeezed herself tighter, but she only hugged air. There was no one she could wrap her arms around and lean her weight onto though, and it put a strain on her back. “I want to go home.”

With a heavy head she looked up and over the low stone wall in front of her at the hill’s edge. Through watery eyes she winced against the horizon where Hjearta was somewhere beyond it. Where Soul’s School was. Where her village was. Where her friends and family was. All thinking that she was flourishing in the Monster Capital. All thinking about how pride they were over her. About how she could wield dazzling magic that she had worked diligently to learn that would impress even the Monster Royals!

They were all thinking wrong, and the only way for Cter to correct that was to travel back. To leave Jarasevo behind her like Romrom did. To again fail to uphold that important promise she was entrusted to finally keep. Cter wasn’t trusting in herself enough at that point to worry about it though. It had fallen further down her priority list than her self-esteem had. Slammed into the floor below without as much as a bounce.

After dragging her right arm across the bottom of her nose Cter stood up on wobbly legs to take in the view one last time before she was to leave it forever. If anyone would glance at her they’d think she was enraptured by the view, which she’d be if her entire world hadn’t shattered and distorted it to a reminder of how far away she actually was. The dread of how she’d ever be able to travel home seeped up through her legs like a pair of wet socks, gripping her bones and echoing inside them like flu up to her chest. Romrom’s memories inside her sleeve reacted to her decision reverberating inside her aura, but with her chest-covering loosened it couldn’t try and convince her soul.

Which was the exact reason why Cter loosened it. 

It was Romom’s decision Cter were to travel to Jarasevo, not her own.

It’ll be her own to leave it though.

And go home.

“You mind me sitting down here?”

“You may,” Cter answered while turning away from the voice next to her. “I’m just about to leave.” Her hand had just gripped the handle on her luggage when she felt a rush of recognition throughout her aura. She stopped half bent-over as she let the feeling germinate enough to confirm that it was…

It was…

It was the same as hers.

Cter stealthily looked over her shoulder to the monster sat on the other side of the bench with the same look in the glimpses of eye Cter could see through the hair draped like a heavy curtain. The identical distant look that wished it was anywhere else but here. Somewhere else where what just happened didn’t happen. It was slightly different from Cter though. Not raw, but from somewhere deeper. A depth of emotion only afforded to monsters.

Did this one feel Cter and came to join her?

The monster coughed a sob that barred its uneven teeth inside its long and scaly muzzle tinted gently blue like the earliest hour after a sunrise. With one of its four clawed fingers it collected the curtain of light-colored hair so that Cter could see its eye fully. Opening up its window to its soul just like that.

Who was this monster?

“Seems we both didn’t really make the cut for the castle,” the monster scoffed melancholic as its stumpy lizard-tail curled inwards. “M-may I ask what you were there for? What position?”

Cter sat down again with a respectful distance between her and the monster. The way it smiled seemed genuine, despite its scary appearance. Cter would’ve jumped out of her skin had she turned her head in a crowd and seen that smiling at her, but with the monster radiating the same aura that Cter did, for seemingly the same reason too, it had her see the smile as calming. 

“I...was there to ask for an apprenticeship.” Cter shivered as the cold words of the guard echoed inside her head again.

“Me too,” the monster replied while nodding as solemnly as Cter did. The two caught glimpse of it and exhaled humorously through their nostrils. The monster a bit more than what Cter did. “Cooking apprenticeship for me,” it added while shrugging its shoulders. The combed hair it had brushed away came cascading back over its shoulder and again obscured its eye.

It brought an annoyed sigh out of the monster.

“Here,” Cter said before reaching down into her luggage. Luckily she quickly found what she didn’t already have in her hand when she took the monster’s attention. A small length of finger-wide fabric that she didn’t have to use for her chest-covering. With a thankful smile the monster took it and began tying its hair into half a braid which it let hang behind its scaly neck.

“Thank you, human.”

It was nothing.

...Nothing?

It really was nothing to Cter. In a good way. Nothing in a good way. She’d forgotten about her visit to the castle for just a moment there, and did something that was nothing to her.

“A mage apprenticeship,” Cter said as she rode the last lingering calm that her nothing gesture afforded her. “But it didn’t go as I had planned.”

“You’re a human mage?” the monster piqued with such surprise that it almost had its hair standing up straight. Would’ve blocked out the sun if that was the case. “You must still be powerful if you went all the way here to Jarasevo to visit the Monster Mages.”

“I just...”

It took quite a bit of effort from Cter to tear her eyes away from looking through the fabric of her luggage onto her sealed scroll again,

“I just graduated,” she said while motioning tiredly over yonder. “From Soul’s School.”

“Soul’s School?” The monster nodded, clearly impressed. Cter wasn’t ready to accept that though. She’d been burnt once already, and even with that calming smile she felt anxiety build up once again over her mage status. “That’s the one in Hjearta, right? The first one built?”

Cter nodded factually.

“You’re from there too?”

And again.

“I’m from Xoff,” informed the monster while pointing over its shoulder, the bend of its arm underneath its chin so that it wouldn’t muffle itself. “Have you been there before?”

Cter hadn’t. “No,” she answered. “I grew up in a small village so I’ve not done a lot of traveling.”

“Besides all the way to the Monster Capital,” the monster added playfully. Cter didn’t entirely agree with it. “Same with me.”

“Sure,” she still said, even if it was through a sigh.

There was a slight change in the monster’s aura. It had mellowed out just as Cter’s had as the two talked, but then it quirked up like a sneeze, almost startling Cter. She looked over to the monster who’s face and muzzle had wrinkled so much the space between its scales on its face were almost as wide as the scales themselves.

“You’re not surprised that I’m from Xoff?” It almost sounded like an accusation. “Not in the slightest?”

“I have a grandmother who is a monster.” Before the monster could react Cter lifted up her sleeve to show. “It’s her memories in my sleeve.”

“And my family is human!” With a couple of excited points between itself and Cter its eyes lit up as well as its smile. “We’re like complements. You have monsters in your family, and I’m a monster in my human family.” 

Maybe?

“Alright,” the monster said with a heavy sigh seeing Cter’s forehead wrinkle in uncertainty and confusion. “Thing is...” It clenched its teeth onto its conflicted tongue as it struggled to find the right words. “Can I say it straight with you, human?”

Cter’s neck craned back a bit as the monster swung its large muzzle facing her. There was a bit of parallax from its yellowed teeth and eyes being just as begging yet in different ways. “D-depends what it is?”

The monster hung its head in defeat as it breathed out and in. “I need a roommate,” it told the bench between the two hoping that the words would bounce loudly enough on the wood so that Cter could hear. It peeked up with one eye to gauge the human’s reaction, its lips tugging as it bit its uneven teeth on them. “I might’ve…” It inhaled again as it shook its head, brushing its half-braid on the backrest of the bench. “I might’ve gotten a place that I could only pay for if I managed to get work for the Monster Royals.”

That’s...not really Cter’s problem.

And the monster could tell from the way Cter close her aura off in a sudden fit of clarity. Its head shot up and it clasped its hand. “Please, human! We’re both in the same situation, aren’t we?” 

No.

“I’m going home. I miss my family.”

“So do I!” the monster exclaimed. “I came here so that I could learn how to cook better!” it continued onto Cter’s back standing up and bending over to pick up her luggage. “I made a promise!”

Cter’s hand again halted on the luggage’s handle.

A...promise?

“To my brother,” the monster said quietly to itself. “My human brother. I’ve not seen him for years. He’s out doing important work somewhere in Xoff, and when he comes back I want to give him the best meal he’s ever had.” It gripped its other arm and squeezed it tightly, almost turning its scale a deep purple akin to the Royal Color. “Maybe then he’ll stay a bit longer so that we can talk for once.”

Maybe...maybe the two had more in common than Cter thought, and with both having traveled away from their mixed families and both having been rejected from Jarasevo Castle on the same day, that was a thought that struck her hard like a hammer on an anvil. “Can’t you just find another place that you can live in alone?” Cter asked with a voice akin to the vibration of an anvil after getting struck by a hammer. She didn’t follow up the question though, just waited with bated breath to listen not only with ears, but with her soul as well.

Because the two’s auras were again the same.

“It has its own balcony to hang up laundry,” the monster revealed as if it was the punchline to a joke. Its faux smirk drained into a frown directly afterwards though. “And to be honest, I don’t want to live alone here.” With longing eyes that Cter could see herself very clearly inside the monster gazed over the city bathing in the long, bright-orange rays of the afternoon sun. “It’s a bit too big for just me, I feel.”

The town was big, true. Cter felt the same about it. Her and the monster’s aura were in agreement on that. They were in agreement of something else too. Something else that the monster could sense Cter was lying about. It was almost as loud as her sobbing was.

“We’ll go back to the castle together, human.”

The monster jumped closer on the bench before it decided it was better if it just stood up instead.

“We’ll get inside. You and me.”

Cter’s left hand balled into a fist.

“Next time we sit here on this bench we’ll both be clad in the Royal Purple and drinking Royal Purple.”

Her sleeve began pulsating.

“Me as a cook for the Monster Royals.”

It surged from her soul.

“And you as a Monster Mage.”

She was determined.


	4. Simple magic for a simple life

“How are you enjoying autumn here in Jarasevo? You’ve been looking at the trees for a while now, human.”

Cter shifted her eyes from the wholly green leaves swaying in the fresh breeze passing by. The shadows of the thin, rounded shapes danced on the cat monster’s face, blending and emerging from its black mask into its yellow fur in the shape of a swirling pattern on its face. “It’s less colorful than back home,” she said while shrugging her right shoulder which wasn’t busy with holding the pieces of the Time’s Square clock in a purple stasis while the cat monster tinkered with a cogwheel. “In Hjearta the leaves shift from green to yellow, orange, and finally red before they fall off and coat the ground.”

“Oh!” replied the cat with its three ears perking. “So that’s why you humans call autumn fall.” He nodded to himself, moving the cogwheel up and down with his nod to keep his eye-piece on it. A magnifying glass that he could wear on his eye. Intricate glass-work that was impossible to achieve without magic. Cter knew about some human mages taking up trades and using their magic to make artisan crafts unrivaled in comparison. “Do you call it spring because the flowers pop out of their bulbs too?”

The cat monster pointed over towards the tool box that Cter kept out of the monster’s reach so that he wouldn’t hit it accidentally, and she brought it closer to him. He thanked her through his aura, which swelled inside her like a flustered beat of her heart. “I’m not sure about Xoff, but in my country it’s more like springing out and welcoming back life,” she explained while moving around the cogwheels the cat pointed at to see if they were placed right. “Spring is a synonym for run in my country.” She felt some of the cogwheels get stuck and scrape with some damming friction which she let the cat monster be aware of as she opened her aura for him. 

“I see,” the monster acknowledged with his tongue peeking out from two of his long fangs. His nose scrunched like a piece of paper as he leaned forward with his cylindrical eye-piece. “Truth be told, hearing that the leaves fall from the trees sounds dull to me. I knew some of the trees in the Royal Garden did so, but that I assumed was because they were out of their environment.” Cter let him move around the pieces through her magic as he saw fit. She’d figured out how to distance herself enough from her own magic and let it act on its own to allow the monsters to take it into their own hands partially.

First time she did it however it felt like an arm was bursting through her chest and taking over her sleeved arm. It was a...strange experience, and one that she had to have so that she could do it again, but properly. Took a week and a half before the feeling had washed off her though.

“Is that a cold breeze or was it you?” inquired the cat monster with a quizzical eyebrow peeking up from behind his eye piece. His eye through the magnification was like a sunflower with its large, dark center surrounded by solid yellow. The fur on him stood straight up like a porcupine.

The cold shiver? Yes, that was Cter remembering the phantom hand. “Sorry, mind wandered off.” With a slight shake of her head she managed to push the cold down her spine again. Even a slight wander of her mind which provoked a memory or an emotion was enough for a monster to feel it if they were Cooperatively Connected. That had been one of the first things she had noticed when a monster asked if she was coming onto her when Cter began thinking of peaches looking over to a skeleton fruit vendor juggling three to impress some monster children.

“No problem,” smiled the cat monster, “just wondered where the feeling came from and if I wanted to get my jacket.” He declined as Cter reached out with her aura to it, giving it a faint purple haze to it before letting it go as if it was waking up in its bed and immediately deciding to go back to sleep.

Cter didn’t really have that luxury nowadays with her busy schedule. Not even during the last year in Soul School did she have to use a journal to keep tab on where and to who she was to go to during the day, but with her mage business having circled around Lower Jarasevo a full lap she was forced to not only get herself a map but also a journal so that she could plan her day out and how to most efficiently walk to her next customer.

The cat monster she was in the process of helping get the Time’s Square clock working again wasn’t on the day’s list, but with weight of the coin purse he offered for her help it was worth enough for Cter to make the detour across a monster couple of corners to it. She’d not been there many times since when she arrived in the city. It was at the bottom of the hill up towards Jarasevo Castle, and the human mage who was flat-out rejected from said castle didn’t really find many good reasons to visit the place.

The coin purse which was tugging her robe’s shoulder down by sitting in her pocket before she applied to it some of the cat monster’s stasis magic he lent to her was again a good enough reason. She’d not done stasis magic before as well. Was she to describe it she’d say that it tickled in her soul and heart in the same way when she was at the apex of a jump while looking down a long cliff while under the effect of vertigo. Her feet too experienced ticklish anxiety before she got it under control.

“The trees are magical.”

Cter hummed in response “Hm?” and craned her head back as the cat monster swiped a pointy tool right in front of her nose while only looking through his eye-piece. He pointed over to the green trees with the rounded leaves planted in rows on the circumference of Time’s Square.

“That’s why they don’t shed their leaves like your human trees. They stay on around the year. Green all days. Some say King Asgore comes down in disguise to tend to them, but most likely it’s actually one of the Monster Mages in an over-sized Royal Robe if you ask me.” He missed his nose trying to tap it with a cheeky smile. On the third try he managed, albeit slightly startled and bending down his long whiskers into a frown which elongated his mouth’s. “Now that I’ve felt how your human aura feels more up-close, human.” His wink was like two doors rapidly closing after letting in a bright morning sun through his eye-piece, and Cter wasn’t exactly sure what he meant by that. She stepped back her aura some until she could figure out exactly. “With that knowledge I am positive that it is one of the Human Mages. If I’m gonna guess I’m gonna say Sund.”

“Sund?” Cter responded through reflex, causing a handle and a cog to arrange themselves into an exclamation point. She wasn’t gonna bend one just to have it be a question mark, that’d make the Time’s Square clock be a couple of minutes ahead or behind depending on which way the handle was bent.

“Yes, Sund,” answered the cat monster in playful defense. He plucked a cogwheel the size of his paw from the floating pile of unchecked ones and gave it a spin so that it rotated freely in the air. Cter took focus away from it lest she became dizzy. “I know that Kry has Asgore’s magic with him, but I can’t really say that he has green fingers. Sund though I can see taking care of the flowers with how much time he apparently spend in the Royal Gardens.” When the cat monster stopped the wheel with his paws his ears again perked up, and another exclamation point with an hour handle and a small cogwheel arranged their purple-glowing selves above his furry head.

It looked wholesomely funny to Cter, who snickered with the back of her right hand pushed against her lips to hide it.

“He’s also from Hjearta,” revealed the cat monster with the exclamation point following the turn of his widened eyes. “That must be it!” It bounced gently as he tilted his head over his pants straps pushing down on his shoulder. “Maybe he’s trying to make the trees here change colors too? Hopefully not fall off as well.” With a shrug that sent the hour handle and cogwheel back to the unchecked pile hovering a paw away from his forehead he returned to the spinning cogwheel he just stopped and bored through one of its holes with a claw. “That’d be dull.” Then he spun it more gently over to the checked-but-not-yet-determined-exactly-where-it-should-go pile.

It was worrying intricate pile which Cter wouldn’t be able to differentiate from the unchecked pile at a glance or even a longer look. The cat monster’s confidence was enough for him to just haphazardly spin cogwheels into the pile without much more thought to it. Must’ve been because Cter was there.

Had it done it before though? Shared his magic with a human mage? His rather leisurely way he commanded his magic through Cter’s magic did have her ponder.

“No, I’ve not.”

Pondered loudly enough for the cat to hear it through her magic, which again spoke of him being confident and used to it.

“Well, I tell a lie,” he recalled with two ears bending backwards, “at least a bit.” He made an indecisive gesture with his left paw as his right was busy with a spring coiled the wrong way. “I was here doing a similar repair when the court of Xoff visited from Ebott castle. The human king was standing a step or so to the left of you were standing, actually.”

Cter looked down at the white marble square the monster was pointing at. She didn’t know why, but she took a step so that she was standing on it. There was no surge of kingly divinity filling her with determination though. There was a cold breeze hitting the removed clock face resting on the cat monster’s magically-propped ladder and flowing up her autumn robe and chilling her to the bone and the cat monster to his soul via proxy though, and he finally asked for Cter to get his jacket for him.

She did so by squatting down and picking it up with her hand instead of his magic, again without really knowing why she did so. Perhaps she didn’t want to cause political tension by using magic where a human king stood before? Even if it wasn’t her own king.

The lesson about human mage politics in regards to the human courts was a lesson she...accidentally...slept through.

“Working with an audience I can stand, but a Royal Audience?” The cat monster blew his cheeks, fluttering his whiskers.

“An audience passing by and not really stopping and taking an interest?”

The human’s guess had the monster’s brow sinking and halting buttoning the top button on his orange-tinted jacket. “...Yes,” he agreed. “How did you know?” Like how Cter had receded her aura the cat did the same with his.

The suspicion quickly dissipated as Cter explained it. “It’s been what a lot of monsters I’ve been helping have said. With me borrowing their magic or them using my magic to enhance theirs it’s always had the crowd catching the sharper scent, so to speak.” She took the opportunity to button her own top button as well, punctuating her explanation with it plopping in place. 

“So anyways,” continued the cat monster after clearing his throat of the cold and using his claw to see how two small gears spun in correlation to the other, “one of the Xoff king’s mages offered to help. She had a similar magic to mine and we worked together to get the clock working in time with King Asgore finishing the tour of the trees here. So while I’ve not shared my magic exactly per say, I’ve used it in conjunction with a human mage before.”

Was that so?

“Come to think of it...” The cat monster scratched his furry chin with a second handle using magic while scratching a claw on his head and having his other hand in his pocket. “I don’t think I’ve seen any human mages sharing magic before.”

Was that so too?

“Not heard of it either,” he jested with a chuckle while pointing to his three ears moving independently from side to side.

He stopped when they spun a bit too much for Cter to be comfortable with it.

“Were you taught that in Soul’s School? To share magic?”

Not extending further than the importance about the Cooperative Connection and how to inscribe it, no. “I figured it out myself.”

“Guess that’s your magic then.”

“Guess so.”

“I’m surprised the Monster Mages haven’t approached you already with an offer for an apprenticeship,” shrugged the cat monster with his shoulders and whiskers. He adjusted the magnification on his eye-piece as he looked up towards the castle. “Guard change,” he noticed after leaning forward a bit. “Good, means we don’t have to stress about this repair if the change is happening now and not earlier.” He adjusted it back as he turned back towards Cter. “Didn’t see any of the Monster Mages on their way down, unfortunately.”

Cter chuckled with the cat monster’s joke even if she didn’t really think of it as funny as he did. The disparity she hid in her aura so that he wouldn’t feel it.

“They already know that you’re here and doing your magic, so why aren’t they seeing the use of it?” The brass eye-piece was buried underneath a deep fold of the cat monster’s brow. “I mean, they have to feel what we’re doing right now. There’s no doubt about that!” With a sweeping gesture in front of him the pieces hovering in the different piles began moving into one big one. With a quiet yelp Cter made a conscious effort to have all the different pieces move back to their respective pile. Sorting them out would be neigh impossible even with the cat monster telling which was which. Only so many ways he could describe a cogwheel before it was lost to Cter.

“And I heard about you and your services through word of mouth, Cter. There’s really no way the Monster Mages are at least aware of you operating in the city.”

“I sent in some paperwork about registering it as a business,” said Cter mostly to give the monster more fuel for his emotions. It was one she hadn’t felt before and was keen on both observing and feel how it would whirl inside her. “I met a couple of humans who were registering their own business as well.” To Cter’s surprise she wasn’t really surprised seeing the human there at the government office. While she did nod and exchanged pleasantries and displayed some magic for them to pass the time while they were all waiting, she didn’t really push that it was a special event to see another human in the Monster Capital.

It was only after her helping a slime monster and giving it some of her fire magic to finish up a necklace the slime was working on that needed some exact tempering that Cter realized why she wasn’t surprised with seeing another human. With how much she had been treated the same as a monster in the city with the help of her magic, those worries from her learning her magic had been eroded away over the year and a half she had spent in the city.

A year and a half…

“It’s bothering me for some reason.” The cat monster perched down on the stop step of his ladder with his fist underneath his chin. “Maybe it’s because we’re sharing magic that I feel that you’ve been done wrong, but still, it’s strange that they’re letting a human mage operate alone with a magic that’s incredibly helpful without at least visiting once and checking up on you.” He shook his head. “You’ve arguably done more for us than they have during the time you’ve been here. The Monster Mages have never just wandered around the city offering their help and magic.”

And even so the green monster defended them when Cter first walked up to him thinking his problems were too trivial for her? That didn’t make sense to her. There had to be other reasons for them not involving themselves directly.

The only one that made sense to Cter and would explain them not seeking her out despite feeling her magic like the cat monster says. Kry’s first assessment of her she’s proven wrong, at least to her. She’s cultivated her own brand of magic all on her own and used it to better the lives in Jarasevo.

What the Monster Mages did had to be more important than Cter could ever understand for them not to even notice her stepping into the role as a human mage, brushing that aside without approaching and offering to cultivate it further.

It brought some fear to her aura as she tried to imagine the towering level of magic they knew that even hers was inconsequential to them and not worthy of further notice than their initial one. It really was as staggering a height as the tallest tower that stood proud as it sliced through the clouds and bringing the cold light of late autumn down on its reflective walls.

At the same time it brought her some calm too. A rather strange calm that reverberated so strongly inside her that she almost lost track of the stasis magic.

If she couldn’t even imagine the difference in magical prowess, then why should she worry about reaching it? A mountain which wall bent curved outwards that she had decided to climb. The clouds that hid that cliff face had dispersed before she’d decided to attempt to climb it again, luckily. Now that she stood below in and looked up at it again the worry about how she would ever climb it drained away from her. It wooshed inside her head like blood surging to her ears and out her toes into the tiles where Xoff’s human king had stood before.

Those clouds that cleared up also revealed how far up she’d already climbed. Not without effort, but with effort she managed. With effort and help from the monsters she’d met. Monsters that smiled at her when she walked by, invited her and Idyll into their homes and thanked Cter from the bottom of their souls. Humans too. Same with them.

Cter had carved and molded a life as a human mage in Jarasevo without an apprenticeship. Who could say that they’d done that? All on her own with the help from the monsters she’d formed a connection with. From Romrom to Idyll to the cat monster she was helping fixing the Jarasevo Time’s Square clock. 

She was content with her life.

And that was fine.

She’d have to buy some expensive wine to break the news to Idyll that she wouldn’t be joining her in returning to the castle. Cter would still do anything in her power to help her friend if Idyll still wanted to. 

Of course she would.

Idyll had even hinted before that she was hitting her own plateau when it came to her cooking. Perhaps she was hiding it so that Cter wouldn’t be discouraged. Well, that would be easy enough to loosen up with some wine, wouldn’t it?

“Could I ask you to try and have the clock tick again?” asked the cat monster after having focused quietly on assembling the many pieces back into the hollow inner workings of the Jarasevo Time’s Square Clock. “Any friction?”

Just some minor between a couple of cogs and springs which Cter relayed and the cat monster quickly identified and rearranged to act more smoothly. He again asked Cter to test if the clock could tick, and she did so through his magic. 

It felt like nothing.

Like gliding on her bare stomach on the village’s lake’s ice after warming up in the sauna on the beach. Same cold too with the wind picking up around her and rustling the ever-green magical leaves around her.

“No friction,” smiled Cter back to the monster who nodded in return. He and Cter helped out together with lifting the glass clock face into place and finally reattaching the handles. “How are you gonna make sure it’s calibrated?” Cter took the opportunity to ask as she felt the cat monster’s magic fade from hers and her robe tugging down at her shoulder again from her given coin purse settling inside her pocket. 

“I’ll just wait for when the castle rings out the next hour like they’ve had to do ever since this one broke. They’ve apparently put someone on just counting out loud up there. Aristocrats so important that even the seconds are worth counting, ey?” The cat monster extended his hand. “This is how you humans thank the other, right?” Cter took it while nodding to confirm his question. He smiled back with a deep bow to his head, ears, and whiskers. “Would have taken the entire day if not tomorrow as well without your help, mage.”

“Happy to help,” thanked Cter before fishing up her journal and preparing to note down. “Will you be needing help in the future?”

“I think so.”

Noted. “And with what frequency? Weeks? Days?”

“The clock needs calibrating once a month or so, but what we did today is rather seldom. Four cogs failing at the same time? Jeez!” He tsk-tsked against the clock with a disapproving frown. “I’ll surely be requesting a budget for your services with the council though for once a month for some calibration with a rainy-day fund for if this happens again. Sounds good?”

Very much noted!

“A bit cheaper next time if I put in some words for you with the council so that I can get myself some good wine and a pendant for my wife for her birthday next month?” came the antithesis of a subtle hint from the cheekily tilted head of the cat monster as he began cleaning his paws with an oily-stained handkerchief.

The brash yet confident suggestion had Cter laughing with the cat. “Sure, sounds fine.” She made an event out of closing her journal hard so that it echoed and leaned into him the same way he did, albeit with fewer ears and whiskers. “Only if you save up enough for some Royal Purple.” When she opened her hand holding her journal she felt her skin peel off like Idyll’s sliced tomato experiment in a pan without any oil in it. The cat monster handed her his handkerchief with a bashful apology through his aura.

“I promise on my soul if that’s enough for a human mage.”

It was.

Cter’s made it so.

For while she wasn’t a Monster Mage.

She was a mage to the monsters.


	5. Kingly tea

“Again, I do apologize for this. This feeling of smug superiority isn’t fit for a king.”

The casually-sighed exhaled as a strange form of apology wasn’t fit for a king either!

At least according to Cter. However, she hadn’t met a king before, had she? Not that she could remember. She’d remember such an intimidating presence of that of Asgore’s. A human king might even have been even more bold and assertive with his presence, but with how Asgore towered over Cter, not including his horns, and with those he’d be mountaning instead of towering over her!

Which he was!

“Do you take lemon or milk in your tea, human?”

The question was spoken as the most courteous of waiter asking a customer for their preference. It created a dissonance inside Cter’s mind which she sought help with from her temporary sleeve. Even with running the feeling by the guard’s presence it’s still confusing. Perhaps it wasn’t strong enough to impose itself more on her soul and emotions? Although with the way her jaw bounced on the seat of the shared bench before dropping to the ground, not even a connection as strong as Romrom’s would’ve been enough to get Cter on more conversational thoughts.

“I...uh...I don’t know,” she answered the courteous king holding the silver tray with drink and drink condiments for her to see. Cter couldn’t even lift her hand to vaguely point at something and let the King figure out what it what she meant and then she’d just accept with a smile the thing he offered to her.

Helped her get through the interview and first day at Soul’s School where she just wanted to be told where her room was so that she could let the reality of her beginning her studies as a human mage sink in with a wet towel on her face.

The King didn’t offer any for her to use though…

“You’re not in any trouble, human,” said the king with a disarming smile through his beard gently flowing with a passing breeze. His eyes narrowed ever so softly as his round cheeks lifted them up during his smile. “Not when the King of the Monsters is sat next to you enjoying tea out of his own wish and volition.” 

The slightest added weight on his words regarding tea had Cter feeling a bit of guilt to not answering him properly. After all, he was the King! She was an escapee being pardoned her crime! Even if she didn’t know why, it was still rude of her to deny the hospitality undeservingly given to her. Her family raised her better than that! “A squeeze of lemon, please.” They raised her better! “A squeeze of lemon, please, your highness.”

While to a human that would’ve been an accurate measurement of the amount of lemon Cter enjoyed in her tea, for a monster that was one of the reasons the castle had much larger doors than she were used to ingress and egress through, the most it did was narrow the measurement down to two options which King Asgore presented without saying a word, and with his disarming smile taking one step closer to a wholesome chuckle at the human’s clear inexperience with dealing with monsters a different size than her. 

He was kind enough to demonstrate to her just like he’d done hundreds of times towards human delegates not used as well.

The King first held the halved lemon above Cter’s poured cup of steaming Golden Flower tea between his thumb and index finger at their first knuckles, and then moved it towards the tip of his fingers, barely holding it at all.

Cter averted her eyes for a split second feeling some bashfulness mixed with longing. Had she had a proper sleeve on and a stronger monster presence around her soul she would’ve most likely have realized even without the King’s demonstration what he meant.

A monster squeeze of lemon or a human squeeze of lemon in Cter’s tea?

“Monster squeeze.”

The answer caught the King by a bit of surprise. His bushy eyebrows raised themselves to get a better view. “Oh, certainly.” He moved the slice back towards his first set of knuckles and gave the lemon a good, kingly squeeze. It didn’t overflow the tea, as he’d only served it enough to allow for the monster squeeze. Like Cter would as if she tried to pick up a single strand of hair from a table, Asgore picked up a spoon and fished out a seed from the golden liquid. He threw it over the railing into the garden. “We’ll see if that grows in a few months,” he joked before stirring the tea and handing it over to Cter with a claw through the cup’s ear.

She took it with a bow, “Thank you, your highness,” and drank some. The monster squeeze of lemon inside the tea gave it that sharp tang which mixed so well with the smooth, yet still so dancing, taste of the Golden Flower. A human squeeze of lemon would only tip the balance slightly which to Cter made the dance clumsily. Made it so that one partner was a novice while the other was a master of the art. Toes stepped on, hands placed at improper parts, and rhythm nowhere to be found.

A monster squeeze of lemon tipped the balance enough so that it came back around, like an impromptu twirl between the two tastes. It had her cheeks tickle as they both imploded and became flush and glowing. Both a tickle and a comforting stroke at the same time. A perfect serenity between the two sense that spread across her face as her cheeks relaxed from the initial taste. A calm which was uplifting rather than thoughtful as her wet towels being heavy on her face were.

A calm which she needed as she was sat next to the King of the Monsters and sharing a spot of tea while being an escapee from Monster Custody at the same time.

A calm which she welcomed with open arms.

“Would you like to say ‘My King’ instead, human?”

Those open arms closed in over her mouth coughing violently after spitting out the finest of mists comprised of the perfect blend of Golden Flower tea and monster squeezed lemon. Without thinking, she handed the cup over to the large, white hand opened friendly to take it while she had her little episode. She leaned over the cast iron armrest to help her surprised ailment, but it didn’t help as much as she wanted.

“Stand up,” suggested Asgore instead of commanding which he could’ve done. Nevertheless, Cter did. She walked over to the railing overlooking the Castle Gardens for support, and leaned on it with her arms outstretched. Her coughs began to settle, and amid their failing strength she spotted the lemon seed resting on a leaf of a tree which she didn’t recognize.

“Oak,” said King Asgore as he too leaned onto the railing. He held out Cter’s cup for her to take again. “It’s native to Xoff. Grows around Mt. Ebott as well as other places. The dogs of the Royal Guard enjoy it due to its black spots on white bark. Reminds them of themselves.” As Cter took it after quelling a hiccup born from her coughing, Asgore too noticed the lemon seed on one of the leaves of the oak tree. He summoned a trident in his hand, but with its crown facing up. With the end of its handle he swept off the seed so that it fell down into the shadowed soil below. “This one next to it is called an aspen tree,” the King then continued to explain while tapping at the neighboring tree with his trident’s handle. “Its leaves shiver like distant applause and roars during wind. It’s very pleasant to the ears.” His magical weapon dissipated into a translucent red blur before disappearing completely. “I had one visiting human from Xoff confuse the two which in turn confused me. Those trees were native to them, so why would they confuse it?”

Cter wasn’t sure if the King meant for her to answer it or if he was just thinking out loud. She nodded regardless, and drank some more tea as he did.

Carefully.

“You don’t have to answer my question now, human.”

While it was blatantly obvious which question he meant, Cter still felt a slight part of herself argue that he meant the question about the Xoff native confusing the trees. She had to shake that one off her. Luckily the King was aware enough of how she was feeling that he didn’t take the shake of her head as an answer.

With thick claws he tapped at his porcelain cup painted with swirling patterns similar to that of the legs of the furniture grown magically. Its ear was big enough that Cter could’ve probably fitted her hand through it with some will and oil. She’d been the talk of the town, perhaps even the country and beyond! Who else could’ve bragged about having one of the Monster King’s personal teacups as an accessory?

A quiet melodic clang found itself among the many colorful trees and flowers inside the Castle Garden having snuck in from outside and between the flags a plenty weakly lifting up their curious patterns by the gentle wind. Cter recognized it. The clang from the clock in Jarasevo Time’s Square. She and the King waited with heads and ears turned over to the flags and the clanging.

Four in the afternoon.

If it was on the day directly after the night where Idyll and her had done what they did, or if it was the day after that one, Cter didn’t know.

“It is thanks to you that we can hear that clock again, isn’t it?” asked the King to brighten up the mellow shadow being cast over Cter’s face. “I heard from one of the town’s clock-makers who came to visit to inform that it’d been fixed that he had gotten help from you. Magical help.” He raised his cup for Cter to clink hers with. She did so after a few seconds of internal debating. “We had to put a Royal Guard on counting duty while it was broken. The peaceful quiet among the castle halls was quite subdued by the loud counting, I gotta tell you that.”

Did he really?

“So for that you have my personal thanks, Cter, the mage.” 

To Cter’s relief the King only raised his cup again as thanks instead of deciding to bow. Had he done that it’d been a bit too much for Cter to be able to keep composure with. Talking friendly with the King is one thing. Talking friendly with the King while you were on the run was another. Talking friendly to the King while you were on the run and he bowing to you?

Thing, stuff, or object, not a single singular would’ve been enough to describe it!

And with the Royal Guard’s magical presence implicating at Cter’s soul that she’s a subordinate to the King to boot…

She drank some more tea to move her mind away from the thoughts before they consumed her whole.

“You have some magic at your disposal right now, don’t you?” The King said it in a way that would elicit an answer from a monster without a mouth. Prying in a way an old friend would. Both concernedly yet with authority behind that was even more authoritative with its chosen absence. “Not a fully-fledged sleeve, but a temporary one, no?”

Cter nodded.

“You wouldn’t mind showing me what you can do with it? Ice? Fire? Strength? Conjuring? Some colorful sprites?”

Was it a trap? If Cter blossomed her magic for a display it would surely alert the Monster Mages that she had escaped. With her doing it so close to the King too it’d be no doubt that they would assume the worst, and deliver it to her to protect the King. She shook her head at the King’s request, and this time it was clear that she meant it as a denial. “I can’t, Your Highness,” she regretted to inform. The way his smile faded to that of thoughtful concern would stick with her for the rest of her life. Such carefree, almost childish warmth, his smile had. With it gone the breeze passing between the two and stealing away Cter’s sigh felt just a little bit colder.

“I’m...outside my cell,” she said despite it being a confession of her crime. “If the Monster Mages sense me doing magic near you they’d kill me.”

“That they would,” the King agreed, which had Cter hiccuping with how easily he said it and how heavy it fell on her. Her cup began shaking in her hand, and she cupped it with her other one too so that her fear wouldn’t be visibly obvious. Through her aura though it was screaming. That the King reacted to after a moment of thinking. “Golly, I’m sorry!” he apologized with his arms halfway outstretched to embrace the human. “That was not what I meant, human. Well...” His arms retreated into a bashful scratch of his cheek. It was very confusing to Cter how she suddenly felt like she was the one that had to apologize to him due to how cute and cuddly he made himself out to be just like that. “They would do their everything to incapacitate you, yes. You’re a human, and a mage to boot, and you’re doing unknown magic near their King. I think that’s actually one of their vows that they’ve taken. To protect me and Toriel with everything at their magical disposal, and more.”

The explanation didn’t really help Cter with feeling better about it, to be honest, and that was expressed without any thought from her in her aura for the King to read.

And sigh against.

“I thought it would lift your spirit and soul a bit, human,” Asgore explained after Cter’s hair had settled after being lifted by his sigh. “I still feel a bit bad about doing what I did to get you to stay. A bit too much Gerson instead of Frioke, in this case.” He drank some tea before continuing. “When they say that the entire castle has been on wide alert ever since you and your friend...” He stopped courteously as he didn’t need to remind Cter about what had happened. “The entire castle includes me and Toriel.”

A heavy duvet was thrown over Cter and the King as his brow furrowed hard at the mention of his Queen. His aura flared up with a sense of duty and resolve that Cter had never felt before. Oppressing, almost. The Royal Guard in her sleeve begged her to kneel. Not because of a sense of subordination towards him, but so that she wouldn’t fall her entire length once her knees gave up from the King’s weight being thrust upon her shoulders.

Her head bowed as he cast a glance burning with such refined, yet primordial fire raging behind his eyes. Those she couldn’t face. Those none could face. It was the look of a King that was worried about his Queen, and further than that, his people and his land.

A Monster King with the resolve of a human. The one monster which could potentially be as strong as a human. A monster who’s presence was enough to sway the land itself, it was said. Cter believed it. As she stared at his large feet with the same color as the marble floor of the balcony upon which Asgore Dreemurr stood.

No, he didn’t stand on it. The balcony was supporting him! It was there for him to help him be the King he could be!

Cter fell to her knees as they gave way underneath her.

“I told Gerson that I wanted a full report by the end of the day,” King Asgore said distantly to himself. Cter saw the shadow of his head tilt up, so she did as well. She saw him catching the rays of the sun beginning their shift towards an evening orange. “I don’t think I’ve ever demanded that of him before. I don’t think I’ve ever made a demand of him, period. It feels...strange. Like it is the beginning of when the pieces he uses on his map begin to fall. When I have to demand of him rather than ask of him. Is it me coming into my own as a King due to me maturing into the role, or is it me coming into my own as a King due to the necessity of the situation forcing me to mature? If I begin to demand rather than ask from now on, would he and Frioke still be Royal Advisers? They can’t be advising if I don’t give them room to give me an answer from their own view.”

Cter was afraid to even breathe.

“Toriel...”

Or blink.

“My dear Toriel. How I despise falling into thoughts like this. How I attest having to mull over if I made the right choice which led to you being the safest. If I have to mature to protect you, then I’ll do it a thousand times over if that means that our time together as King and Queen won’t be cut short.”

Or feel any emotion that would interrupt the King.

“Even…” Asgore’s tensed shoulders relaxed, and he sunk the length of a Royal Guard issued spear. From underneath the golden, bushy stripe on his furrowed brow he again glanced down at the human kneeled at his feet. “Even if that means becoming more human than they could ever be.”

Cter flinched as Asgore’s large hand came into her head’s bowed view. It was opened so gently though, so inviting, and so careful. A hand that could both offer and protect the world to whoever he chose to open it towards. “Even if it means giving humans as much love and care in my soul as I have for monsters.”

His hand could as easily crush Cter’s hand into splinters and blood as it did caress her hand like a freshly-laundered duvet of the finest silk ever to be produced. Same with his other hand which he placed like a fuzzy lid on top of Cter’s hand. He smiled at her, and she smiled back. Asgore helped her stand up, and motioned for the two to sit down again on the bench. Cter nodded in agreement.

And tripped on her long robe the first step she took.

“Golly!” Asgore exclaimed as moved his long, sturdy arm underneath Cter’s body to catch her. It was both incredibly soft and incredibly hard at the same time. She coughed, but if it was from the soft of his fur tickling her lips and nose or if it was the hard of the impact she couldn’t tell. Regardless, it prompted another reaction from Asgore. “Did I hit your head?”

“No, Your Highness,” Cter answered as she pushed herself up on her feet again. She lifted up her robe, but not enough to expose her ankles, and continued over to the bench carefully. There she sat down, and only then did she realize that she left her cup on the balcony floor. She stretched a forced, apologetic smile to the King as in her hurry to be courteous in return she stood up just as he was sitting down. “I...” trickled out of her stunned mouth moving back and forth between the King’s somewhat curious expression and her cup.

What should she have done? She couldn’t just walk away when the King’s sat down, can she? How would that be seen? Worse than her just leaving her given cup of tea on the floor? Better? Is there a way for her too…

Cter glanced down at her arm before moving her glance up to the King. He too looked down at her arm in response, and then over to her cup at the base of the railing. “It’ll get cold if you don’t fetch it,” he suggested very subtly. “You can do that now or in a second after I’ve summoned two of my tridents in my hands to stretch my aura out a bit,” he continued to suggest extremely subtly. “Do you think a gust of wind can be felt inside a hurricane, by the way?”

It would take the rest of the Royal Guard’s temporary presence inside of Cter’s sleeve, and perhaps it would run out before she managed to move the cup over to her proper, but with the King summoning two massive tridents in either of his hands she didn’t really feel like she could back out of it any longer. The Monster Mages would surely feel their King’s magic flaring like the hurricane it was, so while it did good to hide Cter’s building aura as she searched her memories for the feeling of the stasis magic she was loaned, they’d still feel his expanding like it did and come running.

Not that it was difficult for Cter to find the memory by imagining the clang of the clock that had just rung recently and going back from it, the difficulty came from trying to make a hill out of a pebble using only a stone. She could find the memory and feeling of how the stasis magic was to her, and project it into her sleeve, however anything further than that came across as faint and woozy to her soul. 

She would kick herself for not asking for the Royal Guard’s name. Using up his entire presence in just one spell felt wrong to Cter, like she was erasing him from existence in a way. She’d never ran out of a monster’s presence before. It had only been taken away from her. Even when she gave Idyll’s magic back to her it never felt as she ran out of it.

But...didn’t that mean that…

The cup broke with a crash, spilling its bright-amber liquid across the white marble and drowning the shards of the cup that had been its prison. The metaphor didn’t sit well with Cter, nor did the feeling that had prompted her to just cut off her magic with the cup just an arm’s length away from her. She curled up her legs on the bench, and pushed her head hard against her knees. 

“Golly...” said the King. Cter felt the warmth of his large hand hover just behind her back for a second or two before the King moved it away. “Is it about your friend, human?”

Cter nodded.

“I see.” His beard was scratched loudly. “If you want to see her I’m not gonna hold you any longer. However, you feel very much like a human now, I’m afraid.” A long moment passed between the two as the King thought. Gently, he tapped at the top of Cter’s head to get her attention. She lifted her head up to the King offering a handkerchief for her eyes. “I’m going to give you another choice,” he said after Cter took it and began dotting her eyes. “I can give you some of my magic and you can keep hiding in your robe if you want. I’ll tell you where your friend is and you can go meet her.”

That would Cter very much have liked, yes.

“However, since I am a Boss Monster, and also the King, that magic won’t let you blend in as well as the magic from the Royal Guard you made friends with enough to establish a rudimentary Cooperative Connection. Furthermore it might have some effect on your friend. I have...someone...watching over her, so she is safe as safe can be. The best would be if you visited her as you were. Only you. While I can send for the Royal Guard again which you made friends with, I’m not sure if he’ll be able to make the Cooperative Connection again since I’d have to tell him that you’d escaped from under his nose.”

That Cter wouldn’t very much have liked, no.

“My third proposition to you is that you take that large robe off of you and present yourself as the human you are. Not only to me, but to the Monster Mages as well. It’s only a matter of time before they find you, and the trust I’ve given them, as well as my Royal Advisers to make decisions regarding human mages and human magic, I’d only be able to convince them to hear you out and pardon you should they want to go any further.” The King moved his eyes down to the broken cup and its widening puddle of tea. “Doing this will give you the chance to talk with them on your terms, human. Toriel and I have set it up so that the three will always argue for different views of a situation, but with the night’s event I’m not even sure if three are enough to cover all angles of it.”

That...Cter didn’t know if she wanted.

“I’m not asking you to become a Monster Mage just yet, human. That you’ll have to prove by making sure your friend wakes up. Changing a monster’s magic due to their own request? That frightens me to my very soul. I’m reminded, however, of when human magic was first discovered, and the logic from which it works. How it stems from our two species view of death. If you can help us understand what you and your friend did last night, then we’ll be able to change lives for the better, human! Another step towards a future where humans and monsters are the same, together.”

Together…

That’s the only thought that needed to pass through Cter’s head for her to agree.

“I’ll take your robe then,” the King offered friendly. “Don’t worry, I already know that you’re wearing another one underneath. Toriel would have my head and then my dust if I’d ask without already knowing.”

It felt warmer with the dark-blue robe off of Cter. Mostly because of the King’s brow raising with pleasant surprise. “I’d always wondered how that pattern would look on a human that was fit for it.” He nodded. “See it as a gift from me, human. Should you decide to accept my offer later I’ll make sure your Monster Mage robe is made with that pattern. I’ll have it commissioned all the way from Xoff. Not in the forest-green, unfortunately. It’ll have to be Royal Purple for coherent reasons, I’m afraid. Trust that forest-green looks very good on you though.”

As the King folded the dark-blue robe in his hands like a towel, the door Cter had used exploded open with a myriad of footsteps. Three humans, all winded beyond belief, stood with mouths agape and eyes hardened.

“On your terms,” whispered King Asgore to Cter in a way that was unnoticeable for the Monster Mages. “Thank me and shake my hand to show that.”

If His Highness said so…

“Thank you, King Asgore.”

Jaws hit the floor.

“It was my pleasure, human.”

Splashing the spilled tea.


	6. Too much magic is bad for your soul

“Idyll?”

Oh please, oh please, oh please.

“Idyll?”

Nothing.

“Singe my...”

With lack of grace that was inexcusable for her title, Cter crawled down from the burnt window sill between the kitchen and the dining hall after having poked her head and shoulders into the kitchen to try and catch a glimpse of Idyll perhaps doing the dishes with the window opened for the view over Jarasevo. Said window with a view was closed though, and there was no bright-haired monster scrubbing away at the numerous pots and pans stacked on high and insecure.

Cter would have to use the door instead. A door which was forbidden even to Sir Gerson. While Chef Barbeqa didn’t have a higher rank than him, she did know his likes and dislikes when it came to food.

And making an enemy of the Royal Chef was akin to starving yourself.

Cter needed to talk to Idyll though. She needed to have her best friend tell her that things were fine. To stare befuddled at Cter dressed so formally but acting so strangely. Even if Cter had very good reason to do so.

What with the Royal Couple involving Cter in their magical duel to get a vastly different seasoning to it.

And Cter almost disappearing into their memories because of that.

To then manage to fight against it. Another step to her understanding her own soul and magic.

Only to wake up to Sund setting himself on fire.

He wanted to explain.

But Cter couldn’t listen.

She just couldn’t.

She had to plead with Idyll to make sure she wasn’t crazy!

It was worth risking starvation!

So Cter took a hold on the vertical handle, and opened it.

Immediately she was beset upon by an orange fireball that singed past her fringe and shattered into loud embers on the blackened frame next to her. The embers bounced off the skin on her cheek as if trying to coax her out of the kitchen she’d entered without permission. To warn her of what came afterwards.

The smell of cold steel swept by the tip Cter’s nose as her head jutted backwards from the embers tapping against her fair-skinned face. They left behind dots of flush skin akin to freckles that blended together into pure red when Cter turned to see the thrown knife oscillate from its deep bury into the fresh mark of soot that the fireball had created on its impact. In its sharp, reflective surface she saw the warping image of a raging fire further deeper into the kitchen. 

“Cter, the fourth Monster Mage,” came a threatening growl blended with harsh crackling of firewood. An invisible wave of seething heat washed over Cter like a breath against her skin in a hot sauna. She was forced to close her eyes, and in reaction swept her sleeved hand in the direction of the overbearing heat. The lines that grew from her spiral stem were like sleet in their texture, with a bright blue that grew like cracks in a layer of ice. An opaque cloud of snow and ice shielded her from the angry heat, drenching her red-flushed skin with a shower of lukewarm drops of water. “If you don’t leave my kitchen right now I’ll make sure to requests eggs with double thickness to their shells for your meals. Loosely cooked too!”

The threats cut Cter to her very soul and core, yet she had to stay strong. She had to steel herself against the risk that could easily have spelled her death. “Please understand,” Cter pleaded through her shielding cloud as the pelting drops became sharp as needles. “I need to speak with Idyll. It is important.”

“Not as important as you leaving my kitchen!” The lukewarm needles began to sizzle into steam as another wave of heat began to evaporate the edges of Cter’s cloud. “Besides, Idyll is attending an audience with King Asgore and Queen Toriel about new duties to her employment.”

Despite the threatening tone instilling the voice of the Royal Chef with intimidation few could ever muster enough to rise against, there was a hint of pride underneath it all. “She has learned everything I could teach her.” A hint that manifested itself in the heat of Barbeqa’s magic. A spark on kindling. “And everything that I did teach her.” The heat became comforting. Instead of a raging fire it was like a cozy hearth on a winter night. Yet, the temperature hadn’t changed at all. Cter’s face was still just as flush with blood to help cool. The drops formed from her icy clouds still stung like needles on her bare face. “Now she too is gonna cook for the Royal Couple.” Yet, they didn’t hurt Cter at all.

It took only a sigh from Barbeqa for the wave of heat to completely disband, leaving Cter with a cold cloud that began to bite at her face immediately. She dissipated the magic keeping it cold and waved her hand inside it to make it disperse quicker. Once it became transparent enough she saw the fiery head of Barbeqa leaning her orange forehead onto the rim of a skillet she held in her hand. Her flaming hair bounced as she tapped her forehead on the cast-iron rim. “I promised myself not to cry...”

Small, sparkling embers emerged from behind the skillet, falling down onto the stone floor with surprisingly wet sounds. Each proud and happy sob had the eight magically-created abs underneath the rolled-up apron flex with blazing invocation.

“I can’t even kick out an intruder from my own kitchen...”

Cter was at the same time incredibly happy that Idyll had come so far as to make her cooking mentor reduced to proud tears, while also feeling quite bad about still being in Barbeqa’s kitchen with her being unable to kick Cter out. The fire monster’s flames were as hot as her temper.

She was there on a mission though. Cter had to prioritize herself. “Where exactly is Idyll with the Royal Couple?” She had to know. It was important.

The importance grew as it dawned for Cter that Sund was trying to set himself on fire to look like Barbeqa. He managed to shout her and Kurant’s name through the balcony window as Cter took her steps as long as she could to get away from the Royal Garden as fast as possible. Any details regarding Barbeqa and Kurant’s name Cter didn’t hear through the window, but as she stood with Barbeqa in the kitchen it was as clear as day what Sund had done to himself.

And it only made things worse.

“I am not letting you interrupt Idyll’s chance at progressing higher than she could ever dream.” The skillet was pointed towards Cter. “You are her best friend and because of that I am granting you one last chance to get out of my kitchen which you’ve intruded upon.” Its surface became coated with flames of a redder tint than Barbeqa’s. “These flames melted down the ice of the Royal Mage of Hjearta, who has spent his entire career focusing on ice magic. Stand down, fourth Monster Mage. Your choice now is to be served eggs with double the shells, or being served eggs with double the shells charred to soot. They’ll be blacker than the darkest nightmare, and you’ll have to eat them. The entire castle will know of your intrusion as your smile becomes coated in soot and pieces of black eggshell haunt the space between your teeth. You will no longer be know as Cter, but as Sooter! Ngahahahahaha!”

The laugh had Barbeqa’s flames extend upwards with each of her energetic guffaws. Her otherwise chiseled arms and shoulders melted together as her flames grew in intensity, almost swallowing her up until only her face and laughing mouth remained to give any resemblance of contours. The kitchen became bathed in a deep orange that reflected brightly off the walls and floor, yet darkly from the iron pans, pots, stoves, and sinks. A storm of fire surrounded Cter!

The Monster Mage stood still though. An amused, almost smug smile pushing up her left cheek that had become fair once again. There was no blood rushing to her face to help cool her down.

Because there was nothing to cool down from. The flames had no heat to them. They were just for show.

A show Cter had fallen for. Hook, line, and sinker.

Sooter.

“Ahahahaaaaa!” Barbeqa pushed out as a last laugh as her flames calmed down and her body became its chiseled self again. The dark spots of burnt flour sprinkled over her hands and abs had evaporated from her hearty laugh. With a gleaming smile she spun the skillet in her hand. “Oh ever since Idyll mentioned that name before I’ve always wanted to say it myself.” She caught it and threw it over her shoulder into the largest of the kitchen sinks filled with clean and un-shattered plates and mugs. “Sooter,” the fire chef scoffed over the sound of shattering plates and mugs with her hands pushed against her hips and her head shaking with self-made amusement. “I love it! Ngahahaha!”

Obviously Cter had a few more questions she wanted answering.

First one was simple. “So we’re...” she implied while pointing back and forth between her and Barbeqa. “So we’re not on any bad terms?”

“You talking about the double-shelled eggs?” Barbeqa returned with her arms folding over her rolled-up apron. “No, that’s still on your menu for the foreseeable future.” 

Damn it.

“However,” Barbeqa added with a dramatic nod of her entire upper body almost like a bow, but with none of the respect inherit to one. “However, however,” she sprung up again, her flaming hair whipping an orange arc followed by the shimmer of heat-distorted air. “I’m willing to concede the threat of charring them until they become spent coal if, and only if, you make up your transgression by helping me out with a little something.” With a flick Barbeqa returned her extended index finger pointed at Cter back to its folded state over her chest. “You see, your reputation, or to be more exact, your magic’s reputation, precedes you, Monster Mage. It’s in the dining hall where everything that’s worth to be heard is heard. The sudden burst of energy from finally having a meal brings such ecstasy to the mind that it’s easy to forget what is supposed to be secret.”

By a snap of Barbeqa’s finger that sounded eerily similar to a large match being struck against rock, the fire chef summoned a flash of light that blinded Cter, forcing her to shield her eyes covered entirely in blinding purple. There was the sound of metallic rummaging that Cter couldn’t place exactly due to the echo the kitchen produced before calm steps followed up slowly. Once Cter’s eyes could see again she found Barbeqa standing where had before with a leather-bound book in her sizzling hand.

From her thumb and index finger snaked two lengths of fire that burned the impossible knot tying the book together. The book fell open in Barbeqa’s hand, and she dragged her finger above the pages, letting the warm air turn the pages for her. “A new mage arrived in town today, according to Kry, who met her at Krygino’s tavern,” Barbeqa read. “However, that mage he judged to be basically worthless. He almost described it as a waste of his time.”

Yeah, Cter remembered that. Why Barbeqa was pouring salt into an old wound of Cter’s she’d no idea about? While it was fair enough that a chef would be one if any to use seasoning, it wasn’t really metaphorically they did so.

Another fiery sweep had the large book turning several pages in the opposite direction from before. “The immense shock we all felt last night was apparently due to that mage Kry described as useless way, way back. Apparently it is some type of new magic, I managed to glean from the tired whispers the Monster Mages spoke between themselves. Even more shockingly is that they’re considering to make that useless mage the fourth Monster Mage. Not only that, but I am also getting a new pair of hands in the kitchen in the form of that mage’s friend.”

“Yes,” Cter interrupted, “I remember it all. I was there. Why are you reading this to me?”

Barbeqa raised a flaming index finger which she then arced down to flip the pages one last time. “Apparently the new Monster Mage’s magic is changing magic in monsters. That’s what the Xoff journey was all about. To let her get her permanent magic from Bonny Sallus. I wonder if-”

“No,” Cter interrupted again. “I am not gonna change your magic. That’s off the table. Be it dinner, breakfast, or lunch.” She held her gaze cold against the heat of Barbeqa that had begun to sneak itself back up. “Please tell me where Idyll is and I’ll leave you to your cooking.”

The fire chef didn’t comply. Instead she only let her eyes fall back down to continue reading. “I wonder if...” Barbeqa dragged out long with a glance up towards Cter. “I wonder if her magic being connected to Bonny Sallus means she’ll inherit some of his medical knowledge.” She closed the book with a dramatic slam, “I wonder if she can help me with my muscles?” and flexed her arms and core to make sure the point got across clearly.

After letting the moment hang for a bit Barbeqa again lifted her hand to prepare for a snap of her fingers. Cter, not wanting to be blinded again, turned around to make her blind to Barbeqa’s hiding spot without it hurting her eyes.

“It’s a good thing the Deltarune is featured so prominently on the Monster Mage mantle,” quipped the fire chef amid her metallic rummaging. “Gives the turning and shunning a bit more of an impact, don’t you agree?”

Cter wasn’t gonna take that bait.

“You’re no fun,” a heated sigh scorned like the initial burst of a wood-lit fire. “Here I thought you’d be more like Sund and less like Kry.”

“I’m no Kurant either,” Cter sent over her shoulder.

There was a slight gasp followed by the sound of something heavy being dropped into an empty cooking vessel. “No...” Barbeqa tried to make sound untouched, but the quavering in her voice was unmistakable. “No, you’re not.” The metallic rummaging returned, albeit more slower and methodical. The steps too were slow and methodical as Barbeqa returned to her spot more heavily than before despite not carrying her book any longer. “You can turn around now.”

The knife on the door frame Cter entered through was slumped.

And more so was Barbeqa. “No secrets ever in the dining hall...” She shook her head. “Nor in the kitchen.” With a defeated hand she rubbed her stomach, and the abs she was so proud of having. “You’re keen, Cter. I’m sure that’s not really exclusive to you. The entire castle I’m sure knows about it.” Her abs tensed as she scoffed. “Well...all except one.” A flick of dissolving fire detached from her hair as she turned away. “The one that matters knowing.”

Seems like Cter took a different bait than Barbeqa was putting out for her to nibble on. Maybe too Cter bit off a bit more than the fire chef meant for. “Sorry,” she offered. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No, no,” disagreed Barbeqa. “I provoked you. Gotta be as spicy as I want my food to be, like my mom always told me. I should be the one apologizing.”

It was a coin flip whether or not Cter should have pushed for Barbeqa to also drop the double-shelled eggs threat. “Human mom, I’ve heard,” she chose to latch onto instead. “I have a monster grandmother that pretty much raised me since mom was always out of town with her sewing.”

“Human everything,” Barbeqa corrected friendly. She swept both her arms across her kitchen, leaving them wide and outstretched. “They’re the reason I have all of this to express myself with!” Her declaration echoed out of the large kitchen into the even larger dining hall. “They kissed me goodnight and asked me to bathe and scrub the dirt off me just like any other human child in the village. Unlike the other children though they also taught me everything they could about cooking. Not purely out of the goodwill of their hearts, and not purely because of the badwill of their hearts.” The outstretched arms came together in a loud, crackling clasp with each respective index finger raised and then pointed towards Cter. “How much do you know about the Xoff army?”

Nothing really. 

“Not much.”

“Alright,” Barbeqa nodded before looking to both her sides to find a chair which she kicked across the kitchen floor. Cter caught it with some stasis magic, and moved it behind her to sit down on. There was a certain energy to the kick that had Cter quite eager to hear more. The lingering heat on its wooden frame was as if the chair had been out in the sun for the entire day. “Don’t know why Sir Gerson hasn’t told you anything about the human countries and their armies yet, but whatever. Not like he grew up with said army constantly around him.”

Barbeqa breathed in while making sure that Cter was sitting comfortably before she continued.

“So, the Xoff army has a bit of a quirk to it, to say the least. While not getting into the formations and tactics that Sir Gerson does know a bit more about than I do since he invented them, the army leans quite a lot into being human, so to speak. Instead of here in Monster Country where it’s like a pyramid with a platform on top where King Asgore and Queen Toriel stand on either side to keep balance with Sir Gerson just below as the pyramid’s tip and then going further down the ranks.” Barbeqa extended her palm to prevent Cter from interrupting despite Cter having no idea as to why she would interrupt. “Before you say something, yes I know that Priestess Frioke and you Monster Mages are equal in rank to Sir Gerson, but come on now, he’s the one that’s the tip of the pyramid.”

Cter was relieved of the hurt feelings that she never had. How nice of Barbeqa?

“Anyways, Xoff leadership is a bit different. It’s spread out. More platforms acting independently. Like...planks making up a floor for the king and queen to stand upon. One day they need to be in one corner of the room and on another day they need to be I another corner of the room. Just because they’re not actively standing on the planks don’t mean they can go all rotten in case they need to help hold up the country again.” Barbeqa’s flames flared up with her deep breath. “So, the top brass controls their own flavor of the army. Since everything is kept very, very level there’s no real power struggle to gain more of the army, since if one general were to take another general’s slice of the cake he’d be swamped by all of the other generals. Now with that epidemic sniffing about again and sprinkling its miasma seemingly on random they don’t really have the time or energy to squabble for more power.”

Barbeqa breathed in heavy again.

“However!”

She kept her titled head towards Cter for a long couple of seconds before she finally got to her point. “Such equity means that if one general finds something to give his part of the army an edge then the rest are almost guaranteed to follow through with the same finding. That’s what happened to my family’s restaurant.” With a proud finger, Barbeqa pointed over to one of smaller stove jutted into one of the kitchen corners. “When I was adopted we had something like that.” A sweeping streak of proud flame moved over towards the largest stove standing proud like a trophy. “Two years later we had two of these in our family restaurant.” 

The color of Barbeqa’s flames took on a more reddish appearance as she nodded to herself. “Eyup,” her flaming tongue smacked. “I was cooking for entire platoons a month or so after I was walking. Just rotating in and out of the restaurant doors constantly so that they never shut for years on end.” Another nod filled the kitchen with prideful heat. “Eyup. It wasn’t long until the king and queen asked my family to move over to the capital so that the troop movements wouldn’t clog up the smaller roads. They were quickly shepherded me into the Xoff castle where I worked until I was traded, in a way, to Jarasevo castle.”

“You get to do more magical cooking here compared to before?” Cter caught herself asking the question well after Barbeqa had begun thinking about how to answer it. She’d been in a state of half-listening looking for an opportunity to ask Barbeqa for the last time where Idyll were.

“No and yes,” Barbeqa said unconvinced. “I did sneak in a lot of magical techniques because the Royal Mage there wanted me to. He became a sorta mentor to me to build my magic rather than just my hands. Well, I got to use my hands, but in a slighty different way.” She flashed her palms. “How much do you know about Xoff massaging?”

Alright. 

Cter jumped forwards on her chair so that she only sat on the lip of it. Her palms came together underneath her chin. “How exactly does this all tie in with your feelings towards Kurant?” she asked directly with her eyes narrowed. “If you want to talk about your home country, fair enough. I haven’t actually been in Xoff besides my visit to Clinic Hill, and that’s not really Xoff culture, so I’m interested in learning more about Xoff.” The put-together palms slid out from underneath Cter’s chin pointing across the kitchen and at Barbeqa. “But, you were talking about Kurant, weren’t you?”

“You mentioned my human mom though.”

The spiraling lines on Cter’s sleeve almost popped from Cter screaming internally. “Idyll,” she said through her teeth.

“No, that wasn’t her name.”

The twitch in Cter’s eye was easily mistaken for a blink. “Where is Idyll,” she stated again. Not as a question. Just as a statement. “Right now. Where is she?”

“Just out the back with the Royal Couple, but they’re not done yet and-”

Like a loud sneeze Cter’s aura expanded violently to then contract just as quickly. She blinded Barbeqa in her own Monster Mage way, giving her time to cross the kitchen and then open the door leading to the smaller garden usually reserved for high-ranking guests wanting more sun and a beautiful view while eating. Inside a glassed gazebo not unlike the one behind Bonny Sallus’ home on Clinic Hill Cter heard murmurs of a conversation. Quite casual one as well. Mentions of Krygino’s tavern and the likes. 

It died down quickly as Cter neared it with almost mechanical steps. “C...Cter?” Idyll greeted a bit confused and surprised. “Why are you here? Did you go through the kitchen? Isn’t Barbeqa gonna be upset with that?”

Without really recognizing the Royal Couple’s presence despite them almost filling all the space in the gazebo and pushing out the glass panes too, Cter simply walked up to the only sane person she knew. “Am I crazy?” she asked like she was demanding papers at the border. “Am I crazy, Idyll?”

Idyll looked less surprised and more confused. “N-no?” she answered with a shake to her head more to wake herself up to reality. “No, I don’t think so.” Her voice was very, very close to have it become a question instead.

Cter took it in her stride. “Great.” With a jolly spin to her heel she marched back the way she came, leaving her friend to deal with the aftermath of her baffling entrance.

Nothing Cter had to worry about though.

After all, she wasn’t crazy.


	7. It's human being monster

“You’ve been mulling over that journal of yours there, Cter.”

Said mulling stopped as Cter looked up from her newly-acquired journal.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you with it before.”

The audible bouncing from the cobblestone road the wooden wheels rolled over permeated the frankly sprawling carriage interior. At least compared to the one Cter traveled to Monster Country with, that is. Had Kurant chosen to sit on the opposite side she’d probably have to yell her question, and even then it wouldn’t be guaranteed that Cter would hear it.

Judging by the opened purple curtains fastened on a railing in the ceiling Kurant would be sleeping there at night, so when privacy was needed the carriage had accommodations for it. For the questioning moment though she was sitting leaning forwards on a side-sofa that looked of human-make with her Monster Mage mantle hanging off just one shoulder, the one facing away from Cter, like a towel thrown over the shoulder. Reason being was the brace on her knee which she had just got done adjusting its hinges with some oil and a small fire to help it soak in better.

“It’s to keep track of what I’ve promised to do in Xoff,” answered Cter while briefly showing the last page she had scribbled down some reminders on. A list of everything she could remember about what she had promised others about Xoff. Idyll and that one Royal Guard that let her escape, mostly However, each promise needed some planning to do. Luckily it all seemed to converge at Bonny Sallus’ clinic which was where Cter and Kurant were heading. Even her new Monster Mage robe of Xoff make was to be delivered there. The carriage had with it some crafted goods to trade for that dress too as was tradition between Monster Country and the other human nations.

Money was good and all, but any reason to show off and trade the respective cultures were good ones. A Xoff-tailored Monster Mage robe for the monsters and a monster-tailored suit for the humans. Exactly to whom the suit is for Cter failed to ask, but she’ll do it when the opportunity arrives. There was also quite a lot of boxes of Golden Flower tea loaded on the back of the carriage when Cter was quickly briefed by Sir Gerson about the carriage and how the travel with proceed.

Brief was a bit too long a word for just opening the carriage door and going “Here’s where you’ll be for the next couple of weeks” and then popping off for lunch. Quite informal by Sir Gerson’s standards, since he was the one who’d look over the horizon before even the first stone had been put down on the road towards it.

Or however Frioke formulated it, Cter didn’t have her journal with her to note it down exactly, and again what she was writing in it was more art than science to begin with.

Or art rather than magic?

No, didn’t work.

Kurant swung her healthy leg over her injured knee while putting the weight carefully on the brace. “You got a lot of plans for things to do in Xoff?” She said it with a playful smirk as if reminding Cter that the two weren’t exactly going on holiday. “Depending on the situation of the spread of that sickness we might have to make some detours around the big cities so you won’t have opportunity to spend leisurely time, I’m afraid. Even if the contamination has been somewhat contained we still outta stay clear in case of winds moving the miasma.”

“Can’t have the Monster Mages becoming humans again and getting sick,” Cter replied while closing her journal and putting it to the side. She had written down enough that she needed to remember. “We’re supposed to be monsters, after all.”

Kurant laughed silently out her nostrils. “You’re catching on, Cter.” She leaned her head sideways to look out the window which had her braid flopping over her shoulder and almost dragging down her purple mantle with its weight. Even through her extremely-narrowed eyes Cter could still see the longing. Kurant was from Xoff, and it was clear that she worried about her country of birth. “Although maybe that’s not the best phrasing when talking about this.”

“Is your...um...village safe?”

The bright, magically-woven braid slithered back over the shoulder as Kurant turned her head back towards Cter with a neutral look thinning her already thin lips.

“It’s just us two here,” Cter argued with a shrug.

“Guess you’re right about that,” sighed Kurant, which she immediately regretted, but couldn’t inhale back. “I didn’t mean to sigh as something against you,” she defended with some hectic waves of her hands. “Usually I travel alone outside of Monster Country, so company is always welcome. It’s just that, well...”

The shine on Kurant’s sleeve changed from indicating that she was indeed telling the truth with how it made the Deltarune on her sleeve stand on end exactly like the panicked hair on her otherwise-curled-up fringe as she apologized for her sigh, to a more subdued and reserved glow of a very dark blue color. 

“I don’t know exactly how my village has been faring during this epidemic. It would have to be some extremely specifics wind to occur for almost a week straight for the miasma to travel all the way there, but still I can’t help but feel worry about my human family.” Her hand gripped around her sleeve, but unlike how Cter did it to remind her of Romrom and her home in Hjearta, Kurant seemed to do it for the opposite reason. It calmed the dark blue glow down. “I shouldn’t be worrying about such things. Not that I shouldn’t worry had the village been in any direct peril, but it is so unlikely that it would happen that it only weighs me down in my duties.” Her eyes opened just the slightest, with just a hint of orange peaking out. “Our duties.”

“My first duty,” Cter corrected as if to remind. “What is my first duty as a Monster Mage, exactly?” She knew what it was in a general sense, and she knew how it would begin, but she was still ill informed on how exactly it would be her duty.

“Sir Gerson and Priestess Frioke didn’t tell you about it?”

A day or so after Idyll did, yes. “I am to change Bonny Sallus’ magic?”

The inflection to a question was enough for Kurant to understand. She let her sleeve go and readjusted her mantle back over both her shoulders. She didn’t tie it together though, but instead let it just hang. Her braid was coiled in her hood like a pet of sorts. “You are to receive your permanent magic from Bonny Sallus to later be able to change his magic, yes. However long that takes, his magic will have to change to allow him to continue his medical research for the benefit of humankind. He is reaching a point where either the humans have to come up with something new when it comes to the science of illnesses, or we monsters have to give him magic that will be more appropriate for his field of study.” With a tensed flex of her right wrist and hand, Kurant conjured up a ball of green magic that she let swirl like a drop of milk inside a stirred mug of tea between her tensed fingers. “Preferably something that would allow healing, but the specifics of the change he and you will have to decide upon.” Like a hammer onto an anvil Kurant pushed the swirling magic into her injured knee between her brace. It brought to life a colorful sweep that had a similar viscosity to honey which then collapsed into the knee as Kurant breathed in hard through her nose and clenched teeth. “I’m not supposed to do this more often than once a week, but I figured you’d never seen healing magic applied to a human before?” Kurant breathed out with a quivering exhale. “I’ll take your stunned expression as confirmation.”

Maybe it was less the healing magic and more Kurant slamming her hand into her injury that made the application look so painful, but either way, yes, Cter did indeed have a stunned expression draining some of the color on her skin enough that her rosy cheeks looked more like sunburns. She was almost as fair as Kurant was.

“Maybe I outta begin to tell you why healing magic can’t heal my knee first so that you can get an idea of what needs to be changed with the magic. I’ve seen you look at it before, and I’m appreciative of you not bringing it up even if you’ve been understandably curious about it.” Kurant used some stasis magic to untie her boot so that she could stretch out her knee straight on the sofa and not have it bump with each small stone the carriage ran over. She had to cover one of the windows with its curtain though as the sun was shining straight into her face from shifting position on the sofa. She replaced the shut-out sunlight with one of her own which she gave a nice and soft candlelight-feel to.

“Like you said earlier, it’s only us two here, and the reason I don’t want to talk about my injury that much is because I know it pains Kry more than it does me. You’re not the only one who’s hurt friends with magic, Cter.”

While the soft-spoken parallel was in good faith Cter still had to shake off the cold shiver running up her spine. She’d listen though, it was important to her to hear the situation from the other side. While she had listened plenty with Idyll, with Kurant Cter wasn’t responsible for the injury, so it was a world a difference even if it was parallel.

“I was born with it,” Kurant began while tapping on her brace with a knuckle. “Took me a year of more to learn how to walk than the other kids in the village, especially my siblings. Since we were, still are, farmers they we had no real way of getting treatment for it other than me taking it a bit slower than the others.” With a curious tilt of her head Kurant glanced down at her sleeve and then at Cter.

Cter knew what Kurant was thinking. Why tell a story when you can show? “I am in no way comfortable with trying it with a human,” Cter said directly while not missing a beat. The answer was straight from her soul, and even if her mind would have somehow been convinced, her soul would never do it.

The Deltarune on the back of Cter’s hand stood up, as if to put up a barrier before an attack. The fierce denial of the silently-proposed notion was as constant in her hardened stare as it was the equally-hardened slicing motion of her hand and the immense flux vibrating her aura. “Make this another asterisk to us being monsters, but even with the knowledge that the Cooperative Connection is a lie I really see no way in me accessing a human’s memories. The catalyst works outwards, and not inwards.”

“Maybe it does today,” Kurant replied while softly raising both of her bushy eyebrows. “But maybe tomorrow? It all depends on how far we can push your new magic, Cter.” She relaxed back onto the sofa’s armrest. “We have plenty of time to figure it out though,” she offered as a friendly gesture. “More so than what normal human mages have.” She raised her sleeve up in front of her to show. “My guess is that you’ve already guessed it, or maybe Frioke told you, but since we have more magic available to us the prolonging effect of being exposed to magic runs deeper, so to speak. Boss Monster magic to boot.” With a snap the conjured light focused onto the middle of her leg. “Or to knee, in my case.”

Cter wondered when she would become so used to her powerful magic that she could play around it with such showmanship like Kurant could with her conjured light. Same thought applied to when Cter saw the three older Monster Mages play around in the dining hall by throwing chairs and magical barriers at each other effortlessly. Like children packing snowballs and throwing them at their friends. 

How old were Kurant again? Three...four generations older than Cter, but looking like she only was one older. Kry, from what she understood, were like six or seven generations older, and while it showed on him, it only did so in ways that commanded wisdom and elderly respect with his slicked-back hair with a matured color as well as just his stride which showed that he recognized each and every part of the floor or ground below him as an old friend.

It can’t be that it was the Monster Royal’s personality that shone through the Monster Mages after so much exposure and intimate usage of their magic, could it?

And would it change Cter too?

“Unfortunately, slower than other doesn’t really work for a farmer’s family. Not when things had to be done.” Kurant spun her arm around in a vertical circle, with a trail of cyan magic following her hand and forming into a set of farming tools that hovered with stasis. The combination of magic had her aura feel like two different expressions of emotion at once, but in harmony. Cter couldn’t help but poke at it with her own, and as Kurant let the exploration occur without acknowledging it more than a consenting nod, it was clear to Cter that she was to pay attention magically too to learn as well as listen.

“Tilling the land, planting the seeds, taking care of the animals, taking care of the flowers, harvesting, the list goes on. Each morning I was told to take it easy, but each lunch I was told that I needed to help out. At dinner mother tended my knee with hot water to ease the aching.”

Kurant paused for a bit so that Cter could take in both the magic and the story.

“However, when I was around nine or ten I began to grow into my injury. My body had more muscle to it which circumvented the injury. I became stronger enough that wherever my injury was located in my knee exactly was not taking on weight any longer.” Kurant drew on her knee with her finger to show. “My weight went around the injury and not through it.” Drew first around her kneecap and then over it. Afterwards she lifted the brace up a bit to be more visible to Cter. “Sadly, as you can see, a lot of that muscle has escaped me,” Kurant chuckled with a hint of dramatic forlorn. “I still have my broad shoulders, wide stance, and brash walk because of my upbringing, but it’s...um...softened over my years studying magic. Like with metal you have to soften it to reforge and shape it differently, and with how different I’ve been shaped, from working at my family’s farm to becoming one of the thr- four most powerful mages in the world, it’s no wonder I’m still soft from it.” 

A confident grin shone brighter on Kurant’s face than her conjured light. “But that’s not to say that my soul isn’t the sharpest it could ever be.” She slammed her sleeved hand shut, letting purple magic seep from her sleeve and surround it to be indistinguishable from the dark purple of her mantle. The only semblance of pale was from the strands of the Deltarune on the back of her sleeve rising and swaying in the magic like grass in a wind, the rest of her exposed arm became a flowing extension of the purple of her mantle.

It didn’t take long before the wind became a storm as Kurant showed what her soul could manifest!

With a stomp of her hand flat down onto the red cross-stitched carpet covering the carriage floor, the accumulated purple drained like suckled honey into the carriage, covering its entire interior with a purple haze that tickled at Cter aura and soul wherever she touched either the sofa she was sitting on or the carpet her feet were resting on. She noticed a silence that gripped every fiber of both her magical and physical being, but she couldn’t believe it.

Kurant’s proud smile from her angled head told enough to convince her though.

The sound of the cobblestone road underneath the carriage had ceased, yet Cter felt that they were still moving forwards. 

The deafening silence didn’t stick for long though, as it was shattered by angry knocking from the front-facing window. The driver did not even wait for it to be opened from the inside, and instead threw it open hastily.

“I almost fell off my seat!” the hooded driver shouted into the carriage with one arm desperately holding on to the roof of the carriage. “Set us down, Kurant! You’ll disturb the barrels of Royal Purple!”

A gradual sensation of falling lasted for a couple of seconds before the sound of the wheels rolling across cobble was again heard through both the vibrations of the carriage and through the opened front window. “Thank you!” huffed the hooded driver as they closed the window again like a disappointed parent.

Cter sat breathing in and out to have her stomach calm itself down and not make a mess of the upholstery on the first day of the travel. She’d rather not spend the rest of the journey with all the windows opened, even during the night.

“I...maybe I should’ve warned you beforehand,” admitted Kurant as she sat up straight again on her sofa. “I’ve not had a lot of reasons to show my magic off lately. Haven’t needed to travel outside Monster Country to check up on operations in human countries for a while now and those are the best, maybe even only, reasons I’ve had to demonstrate what a Monster Mage is capable of.” She briefly focused stasis onto the jug of water held with a metal fastening on a table between her and Cter before deciding against using magic for the time being. “Water?”

Yes.

“Although I could walk normally when needed I still had to work a bit slower than the others,” Kurant continued while pouring and serving Cter some water. She took the opportunity to pour herself some too. “The agitation could only be hidden for so long once my heart began thumping. Being reminded once a minute when walking I could ignore, but once every ten seconds, if not each other second?” She took a sip for dramatic effect. “That was not possible. Still I had to keep up since my family depended on me. My mom bought me my own towel though for soaking my knee during the evenings. Spider silk from Jarasevo in the same stripy pattern that Queen Toriel had given Prince Soulay.”

The second sip was aborted as Kurant’s laughter through her nostrils pushed away the water from her lips. Had they been fuller she might’ve reached, but alas. Her aura flustered with the laughter too, rounding softly.

“You have a guess as to how we discovered that I had potential for magic, Cter.”

“Still had to be confirmed though?” Cter replied before drinking some more to calm her stomach. The angle she brought the cup up to her lips had her hitting the edge of her chin, and when she looked down to check for any spillage, she noticed that she was leaning forwards eagerly while she listened. 

“When the traveling monster merchant returned for the next season my father invited him over for dinner so that he could asses according to the Soul Surveying. I’m sure you’re familiar with that, aren’t you Cter?”

True, she was. They were sitting together as Monster Mages because of that. “I had Romrom surveying me. Groomed me to be a human mage almost as soon as I was born. My dad likes to poke fun that Romrom almost swooped me up first before he could. Says that he had to elbow his way in front of her and that he felt murder from her despite her being just a single corvian monster.”

“Stood with feathers lifted and ruffled with her arms folded huffing when he treated you like a human baby rather than a monster one?” joked Kurant with her arms mimicking the disobedient gesture.

Cter laughed together with Kurant. “Romrom would never admit it, but yes.”

“Were your siblings or other kids jealous about your magic?”

“Not really, no. I say groom, but it was mostly Romrom talking about magical stories rather than human ones when she read us goodnight while mom were out of town with her goods.”

“Seamstress, right?”

“Yes, seamstress. She convinced dad and mom quickly that I was destined to become a human mage, and they were supportive when I decided myself that I wanted to be one.”

Kurant lifted up her sleeve to have Cter lift her up as well. “And now you are a Monster Mage, Cter.”

That she was. A Monster Mage.

That she was.

“Some advice to you from an older Monster Mage now that we have begun talking about family, Cter.” Kurant breathed in deeply through her nose while clutching her mug of water with both hands. “Visit them. I’ll make sure to have your next assignment be somewhere in Hjearta so that you can. Probably we’ll have you go visit Professor Leraull and maybe do some mingling at the Hjearta court. Nothing fancy.”

Nothing fancy? Visiting the Hjearta castle wasn’t fancy? And Kurant just waved dismissively while saying it.

What?

“I meant no real heavy assignment,” Kurant explained seeing Cter’s perplexed scowl. “Just to meet the Royal Mages there.” Kurant’s forehead folded in thought, giving her the wrinkles she should have had with her age. “I think they’re Royal Mages plural by now.” The wrinkles flattened out as she shrugged the thought off. “Oh well, you can report back on it when you come home. We’ll schedule the trip so that it swings by your village. Romrom was a village elder, right? I’m sure we can send some stuff along as tribute for her housing a Monster Mage on such a short notice.” 

The wink was really, really superfluous, but it got a good chuckle out of the two Monster Mages, as well as something from the depths of both Cter’s heart and soul.

“Thanks.”

Kurant nodded solemnly. “I’m doing this for me, believe it or not. I made a mistake with only having that old spider silk towel as something to remember my family with.” Her sleeve was again lifted before her, but this time with a more distant pair of eyes staring at it. “When you are used to memories of others being at the literal touch of your fingertips and the metaphorical touch of your heart. When you’ve taken for granted that memories can just be summoned vividly so much that it has become second, if not first, nature to you. It’s then when you’ve become more monster than human that the reminder that others are human hits you harder.” It fell down tiredly on her injured knee. “And your soul refuses to consider the one part of you that is unmistakably human an injury.”

The carriage slowed to a stop as the two humans looked the other in the eyes without saying a single word more. It wasn’t until a minute or so later that the front window was knocked on and Kurant turned away to answer the driver opening the window to inform that Kurant was needed outside for confirmation of the travel outside Jarasevo by the Royal Guards stationed at the gates.

“I will,” Kurant said as she stood up carefully while leaning on her healthy leg. “Thank you.” Before she opened the carriage door though she stopped and faced Cter again. “And thank you too, Cter.”

But for what?

“For being human with me.”

With limped steps Kurant dismounted out the carriage door.


	8. The Tell-Tale Soul

“Huh...”

After arriving at the institution where humans are taught to utilize magic, the welcome one of the four most powerful mages received was…

“Where is everyone?”

Nonexistent.

Only the sound of Cter scratching her head accompanied her down the wide gravel path leading towards the main building. The large sign spelling out the full name of Soul’s School was unmistakable. She was at the right place. The lake and green fields behind the school were the same too, just as how Cter had left them. All that was missing were souls, human or monster. Not a single one in sight, not a single one to be felt in Cter’s aura. No monster aura and no fledgling human mage aura. 

Just quiet.

Cter had some guesses as to why though. 

From her robe pocket she brought up her journal, flipping it open to the conjured bookmark she had placed for the week. She read the week and its dates, the first time in a month. It confirmed her suspicion with a brief “I see” which had her pocketing her journal again. The quiet around her she understood.

Understood with a gentle hint of rude pleasure.

It was final’s week at Soul’s School.

And she didn’t have to do any!

Oh how Cter wanted to laugh out loud without any care in the world. All the stress from staying up late at night was inverted inside of her, resulting in an overwhelming sense of happiness that almost had her twirling around in the middle of the wide path with her arms outstretched to freely touch without any resistance where her worries and panic would be!

She stopped just short of making a rude gesture and blowing a raspberry at the large entrance inviting any and all to learn within its dry-aired embraced.

Still, how wonderful it was that she didn’t have to worry about any of the exams being taken within the brick walls she was approaching with a bounce in her happy gait. Her mantle jostled on her shoulders as she hummed a pleasant tune accompanied with a whistle. The chestnut-brown hair swayed from side to side with each of the jolly steps.

Eventually though Cter reached the massive gate big enough to welcome anyone that wished to enter. The same one she’d stood before each and every day, mostly, for years on end. Her left arm curled inwards to get a better grip on the books she didn’t have anymore. The reflex tickled her, and she laughed quietly out her nose.

“Been a while, hasn’t it?” she greeted to the door as she placed her sleeved hand onto it. “Sorry for punching you with excitement last time.” Like those every days, mostly, for years on end, the door opened without any real effort from Cter. It only needed her to hint at it with her body weight for its magic to understand. Without a sound, its impressive span swung open.

“If you’re a late student for the exams please write your name and course on the form here next to me and proceed to the appropriate room,” a slim skeleton monster said without looking up from her book titled ‘A Soul’s Search’. Cter had heard of it before. A romance novel between a human and a monster. While it didn’t really entertain the same shock value of its material during Cter’s day-and-age, it was still very well written, or so she had heard. “Points deducted for your late arrival you will have to discuss with your lecturer after you’ve been cleared of cheating.”

Should Cter have politely corrected the skeleton monster and carefully informed that she wasn’t a student?

Probably.

Did she?

Well…

First she planted her left elbow into the open palm of her right arm across her stomach. “I might be a bit more than just late,” she said with her voice lowered in pitch for dramatic effect. As the skeleton monster began to move her chiseled, standing-oval-shaped head away from her book Cter extended the fingers of her sleeved hand over her face. “I am Cter, the fourth Monster Mage.”

She was courteous enough not to raise her voice or throw out the gust of air since that would’ve just resulted in a whole bunch of strewn-about forms about late arrivals to the exams. That wasn’t the way of a Monster Mage. Promoting human and monster cooperation did not manifest itself positively with improper administration as a result of unnecessary boasting. 

Only boasting fitting the zeitgeist promoted cooperation positively.

The skeleton monster’s smallest finger was left inside the closed book as a bookmark in the haste to scramble herself proper for the important guest that stood back-lit in the enormous door. “Monster Mage,” she greeted with a deep bow that would’ve broken her non-existent nose on her table. “W-What brings you h-here to Soul’s School?”

What brings her…

Cter’s left arm fell down via its elbow pivot. “Didn’t the message of my visit reach Soul’s School?” Strange.

“Oh no no no no,” the skeleton waved with her nine remaining fingers hastily enough that Cter craned her body back as to not be hit by any flying fingers. “I-I meant that w-we didn’t expect y-you today.”

“Ah,” Cter voiced with an acknowledging nod. Her hand pivoted back up over her face again. “I am pleased to see that you are prioritizing your mission of education,” Cter then congratulated as she spoke around her hand. “The fifth Monster Mage might just as well be taking his or her final exam as we speak. Perhaps even the sixth.”

“Yes, yes indeed,” nodded the skeleton monster with her permanent smile shining a bit brighter as the nods continued. “It is quite the honor to have you here during these most important days for both the faculty and its students.” The nods slowed down as the skeleton monster collected bravery within her soul. “If I might be so rude as to ask you to please have your aura contained during your stay here? It is to prevent cheating. The human students are not allowed to feel with their auras during the written tests, nor are the monsters.”

“It is fine,” Cter smiled after angling her hand down just enough for her calming smile to show. “I was a student here too.” Then she put her hand up again. “Before I became a Monster Mage, that is.”

“I see.” The skeleton monster put her four-fingered hand against her ribs pushing against her folded dress. “Well, I am guessing that you’re here to see Professor Leraull then, Monster Mage?”

Cter kept her fingers spread as she answered. “I am. Will that be a problem now with the exams?”

“It shouldn’t be a problem, no. Professor Leraull has appointed one of the traveling mages in charge of his exams during the week. He has been asked to come visit on occasions for one reason or the other, but with your scheduled visit he’s been enjoying some quiet organizing, in his own words. His office should be the same as when you studied here. Down the main hall on the left bridge, two doors to the left, then the third door on the right in that corridor, just in case.” The skeleton ended her explanation with a warming smile. “Just be sure to knock, please, Monster Mage.”

That the skeleton monster thought that Cter was above knocking before entering was quite amusing.

“Then I thank you for the information,” thanked Cter with her right hand extended to shake the skeleton monster’s, yet with her left hand still spread over her face. She hadn’t really given that part of her entrance any real thought, resulting in a rather strange dilemma for her.

When was she supposed to lower her left hand from her face? Too early and it wouldn’t be as important as she wanted it to be, too late and it would be just the same, albeit more awkward.

What to do? What to do?

“Script,” answered the skeleton monster as her name as she took Cter’s hand in her four-fingered one. “Braille Script.”

Aha!

Cter found an excuse!

Her left hand joined her right in embracing Braille’s four-fingered hand. “Thank you for the information, Braille Script.” In it she left a conjured bookmark the same as she had in her own journal. The cyan glow was quickly noticed by the skeleton as it glowed between her bones. “As thanks.”

A bright blush turned the bone-white cheeks a pinkish hue. “Oh...” Braille said with an embarrassed fluster to her voice. Her quietly-salmon-colored eyes shifted down to her book opened slightly ajar from her finger among its pages. “You noticed.” 

Cter’s first thought was to give Braille a magical finger, but then she’d have nowhere to put her real one that she detached. 

“It should hold for the rest of the book.” Even if it was just a bookmark Cter had conjured Braille still had the vast majority of her book left to read. “Maybe two depending on how fast you read.”

“I’ve only managed this far in the span of a month,” the skeleton monster was again a bit embarrassed to admit.

“Must be a good one then if you want to spend time with it.”

The blush turned the bones the brightest of red. “Yes...”

Seemed like the monster was eager to get back to her reading, so Cter decided to leave her to it. With a wave she headed down the large hallway underneath the large hanging tapestry that said-

“Wait!”

For as profound as the changed motto was it didn’t really speak to Cter as much as the shout from Ms. Script stood up with her book clutched against her chest with her arms diagonal over the inscribed title. Her salmon-colored eyes had flared inside the dark hollow that was her eye sockets. Her knees were shaking, oscillating the soft fabric of her dress, in contrast to the solid clacking taking place underneath it.

She regretted her yell before her voice even had time to settle in the large entrance hall adorned with paintings and statues. “I m-mean...” she stuttered. “I j-just c-checked the c-clock.” Wherever it was. Not anywhere Cter looked. “P-Professor L-Leraull w-will be making a r-round to a-answer q-questions from the s-students. It’ll t-take a...while.”

Mhm?

Braille averted her eyes as Cter’s brow sank with careful doubt. Careful in the sense that Cter was curious too as to why the shy, bashful skeleton decided to stand up and loudly demand the attention of a Monster Mage. There was awe and respect in Braille’s voice when Cter spoke to her, maybe even a bit of hesitation of saying anything at all for fear of saying something stupid. 

So why did she shout like that when she was fully aware of the quiet time that were the exams at Soul’s School?

“A while, you say?” Cter prodded with a tilt of her head that cascaded hair over her the edge of her shoulder. “How long would that be?” She couldn’t prod too hard though as that would just have Braille sit down again and say that she was mistaken and that Cter could just head over to the Professor. Braille was lying, that much was obvious, but for what and why though?

The pink flares inside the skeleton monster’s sockets scrambled like confused fireflies for a good reason. Any reason! Anything at all! Her aura almost puffed the folds in her dress like a bellow. “I...uh...” Among her scrambling Cter noticed that Braille’s grip on her book had hardened. A clue, most likely. “How ab-bout s-some t-tea, M-Monster M-Mage?” W-While you w-wait?”

Cter chuckled to herself before she turned around fully to walk back to the skeleton gasping with disbelief that the Monster Mage turned to return. “Sure, I can go for some tea.” Cter had the entire day, after all. No way that anyone of the students would be out of the lecture halls before supper came to squeeze at their stomachs. “Thank you for offering.” The pile of late forms was untouched as well. If a student was that late then they wouldn’t be there at all.

“Y-yes.” The pink scrambling returned, searching desperately for any and or all tea to be offered to the Monster Mage walking gently back with her hands folded behind her back. “T-Tea.” It wasn’t long until the salmon colors became flickers. “Tea...” Followed by rapid streaks bouncing against the walls of the widened eye sockets. Desperately they searched, but nothing was to be found. Not a drop of liquid in sight on or near the table. Good since there weren’t any risks of the forms being spilled on. Bad because the Monster Mage that wanted some tea was approaching.

What to do!

“Perhaps the tea is being carted to the exam rooms as well?” Cter offered to the panicking monster who’s dress was flowing and flying like she was dancing. With a sweep of her sleeved hand behind her Cter summoned a chair to sit on. As she did, the skeleton monster’s head turned to her gifted bookmark. It was still in her hand, to her surprise. “Monster Mage,” Cter reminded with a gentle lean forward before the pressure became to much for poor Braille Script. “I’ve learned things not taught here.”

“Y-yes, f-forgive me.”

Cter motioned for the skeleton to sit down again. “Please.” Otherwise she’d just shake herself apart into a pile with her dress acting as a very expensive bag. It was like someone had thrown an assortment of pans and pots down a flight of stair as Braille seated herself again with breath uneven and blush burning. Her grip on her book loosened, with a slight painful grimace being let through. Cter guessed that the poor girl must’ve squeezed her finger inside the book, but couldn’t show it.

It took a minute or so before Braille had lowered her clutched book down onto the table again. As if brushing aside the hair of her firstborn, she opened the many pages left that she had to read to get to her loose finger, which she slid back into place before replacing it with her gifted bookmark. Her eyes lingered on the paragraphs spanning the length of the page, as did her reattached finger. It was as if she didn’t want to leave the comforts of the paragraphs. “Monster Mage?” she asked with a reluctance that stemmed from more than just her shyness. “You...you are the embodiment of human and monster cooperation.”

That Cter was, yes

“Yes,” continued Braille with her blush having reach her reattached finger. Her pinky finger. “You are.” Come to think of it, was it really attached? No, not really. Her hand and her finger were still separate. To the naked eye they were attached, but the way her aura felt, and the way it didn’t move with her little jostles and shy squirms didn’t look natural. “This book...”

“It means a lot to you,” Cter guessed the obvious. “Do you use your finger as a bookmark for all of your books?” It was a curious quirk, to be as polite as possible. “That why you only read one at a time?”

That might’ve been a bit too far.

“I...” Braille’s shoulder were sucked in, her blades hitting each other with a silent clonk. “Yes,” she answered, albeit very reservedly. “When...when I read my books, I don’t read like you do, or anyone else, for the matter.” Her hand pushed further up the page, with a gentle brown glow leaving an almost invisible haze on the letters. Had Cter not known it was magic she’d assumed that the letters were just weathered a bit. “When I read, I use my aura. I feel with my fingers on the letters. It lets me feel the full emotion the author intended. When the action ramps up the strokes are quicker, thinner. I can sense the quick gasps as they wanted to convey, both from the characters in their story, and from the author themselves. During heavier, slower scenes, the strokes become thicker and more methodical, as if the weight of the scene pushes down on the author’s hand as they write it.”

That was...not what Cter expected at all.

“It’s something that my magic isn’t supposed to do though. Like having a human’s dominant hand changed to their non-dominant one. It feels wrong using my magic to read, but it’s the only way I can read. When I read like that the emotions from the book replaces the uncomfortable feeling.” Braille glanced down at the gifted bookmark she put down. “I don’t w-want to s-sound ung-grateful f-for y-your gift, M-Monster Mage, b-but...”

“But you’d rather save the emotions from your reading?”

Braille nodded her chiseled, oval-shaped head.

“Do you detach your emotions and save them in your finger? Temporarily, I’m guessing,” Cter asked to get a better understanding. “Is it still a part of you or does it become like magic when you do that? It lingers? Like the magical heat after a fireball?” She was quite interested in that.

“I guess you could say that my finger becomes the fireball,” Braille answered after some thought that created furrows in her solid forehead. “And the emotions from the author like the magical heat, but to me instead of everyone else.”

So her finger was the projection of her soul, her magic, and the emotions from her reading were the lingering afterwards, the dust. In a way that could be like her having made a Cooperative Connection spiritually, in a way. No physical human recipient, but more the ideas from the human. Was the human soul powerful enough to establish itself through written text if the author’s intentions were personal enough? Could a monster trained in this deduce the identity of the human? How about a mage? How about a Monster Mage?

Curious indeed. Cter was very glad that she chose to stay and hear the skeleton monster out. Her spiraling lines began to glow too.

Cter scooted forwards with her chair to get closer to the table. Not close enough to read what was on the page that Braille caressed so carefully though. Although Cter didn’t really need to read to get a feeling for what was depicted in the page’s prose. She could feel it in Braille’s aura plenty enough.

Almost to the point of blushing herself.

Oh boy!

No wonder the book was considered lewd and crass back when it released.

“Why I asked that you were the representation of human and monster cooperation, Monster Mage,” Braille brought back with her fingers scraping at the page to form a fist. “The warmth I feel in these pages. The warmth of the romance between the human and the monster.” The salmon color became like watching the fish itself as the eyes were filled with water. A lake of hope, pouring out in a narrow stream down the chiseled cheek. “It describes a heat I don’t...understand. A heat that I don’t have. When the book talks about the soft strokes over the human’s cheek, or the tickling breath on the monster’s fur, I can’t...” The fist hardened. “I read and I read and I read again, but I can’t...” Drops faintly pink fizzled against the conjured bookmark laid across the bottom of the page. “Why can’t the next read be the one? If I just read one more time then perhaps that one will be one that has me understanding?”

Poor girl…

“Did you come to Soul’s School before or after finding that book?” Cter wondered as gently as she could. Touching the skeleton monster with her soft body after Braille had just cried out that she couldn’t understand the soft touch would’ve been pouring salt into the wound. If that had worked then she wouldn’t have been in the state she was. Cter had a hunch how she could help, but first she had to ask a bit more. “Was the reason you came here the book, to be direct?”

Braille swiveled her swimming fishes to Cter. Tears had pooled in the dents underneath her eye sockets, like two small, white bowls. “No,” she answered after a snivel. “I came here to learn more about the history of humans and monsters. I’ve helped out my professor throughout the years so he was willing to give me the grade I wanted before this exam week. Since I didn’t have anything else to do I figured I might as well volunteer one more time.” Braille scoffed, spilling her full bowls of tears to come raining down onto the pages she felt so conflicted about. “And now I’m crying in front of a Monster Mage...”

A Monster Mage that wanted to help.

The drops of tears hovered in stasis just above the brown-hinted letters, caught by the simple whim of Cter’s magic. “That’s strange,” Cter said a curious tone to her voice. “I’ve seen crying from humans and monsters with fur, scales, slime, feathers, and now bones.” It was a lie that it was the first time Cter had seen a skeleton monster crying, but for the purpose of her point the lie was as white as Braille’s bones. “Yet the tears all look the same.”

More splattered out of the deep eye sockets as the pink glows flickered like rapid blinking. “They do?” Braille replied. “All tears?”

“Yes,” Cter nodded as she brought up the stasis-held drops between Braille and her. “Look at them yourself. How are they different from any other tears you’ve seen before?” With unbothered patience Cter waited for Braille to take as much time as she wanted. “They’re not, aren’t they?”

The double negative had Braille pausing for a brief thought so that she answered correctly. “No, they’re the same, yes.” Another pause. “Yes.”

Whether it was correct or not didn’t really matter. “The reason for that is that despite all of our differences, we’re the same in our emotions. Different when it comes to magic, but not in its physical manifestation. These tears everyone else cries, Braille. Your emotions are what everyone else feel too. They are the same ones. That’s what I have found during my time as a Monster Mage.” Cter let the tears drop onto her sleeved hand where they collected into a small puddle. She widened it for the purpose she wanted it to serve. “Look at your reflection.”

Braille leaned over the sleeved hand that Cter moved over the table. “It’s...me?” She looked closer as if trying to find out if one drop were different from the rest. “Isn’t it?”

“And do you think he would have you any other way?”

The disjointed aura from the skeleton monster imploded with haste, sucked back with bashful hurry.

Just like how Kurant’s does when pressured about her and Barbeqa.

Because the emotions are all the same.

Be it a Monster Mage or a monster.

“H-H-H-H-H-H-H-o-o-o-o-w-w-w-w-w-”

Cter had to interrupt the nervous clattering before it became too loud. “I can tell,” she said as she clutched her sleeved hand and morphed the tears to a soul-shaped piece of pink ice. “The cold you’re feeling is not because you can’t feel warmth or be able to give the warmth depicted in your novel. It’s because you’re afraid that it’ll be colder if he doesn’t reply with his warmth.” Her naked hand touched her cheek. “You feel this?”

Braille did on her own blushing cheek red as a rose.

“Burns, doesn’t it? No wonder you feel cold in comparison.” Cter turned her head towards the stairs leading down towards the main hall of Soul’s School. “You should talk to him. Maybe not directly after the exams, but perhaps tomorrow during the post-exam celebrations?”

“B-But w-what-t if-f h-h-e s-says n-no?”

“What if he says yes?” Cter retorted. “And why shouldn’t he?” She motioned towards the book. “A Soul’s Search hasn’t been a big deal for centuries now. I have a friend back in Jarasevo that’s in love with a fire monster. My grandmother is a monster too. It’s not anything special.” Wrong phrasing. “It’s not anything meaningful.” And again. “Look, it’s...” Oh for… “It’ll be fine, Braille.” Cter finally ran out of good words to say. “Your dress looks wonderful on you and if he’s at Soul’s School too you’re both bound to find something in common. You said you wanted to learn about the history of humans and monsters, didn’t you?”

A meek nod angled the eye sockets, but with the salmon colors not moving at all.

“So go write some of your own.”

And with that Cter turned down the hallway.

Because she was out of good words to say.

Plus with her dramatic entrance figured out…

She needed a dramatic exit too.


	9. Shot through the heart

Remember the feeling.

The sensation of the different creating the familiar. Turning left but still coming up the same as if turning right.

“Monster Mage?”

Make the different familiar. Have the wrong be correct. The hunger the filling. The emotion the thought. The thought the emotion. An out-of-body experience from within.

Collect it…

“Monster-”

And make it shine!

Huvtvao’s eyebrows shot up as his escorted Monster Mage threw her sleeved hand forwards with a focused “Yah!” that resulted in a massive, spectacular…

Nothing.

“Do you want me to wash your sleeve?”

Huvett’s neck bent down like a snake hanging off a branch down under Cter’s left arm. Curiously he inspected it, sniffing it lightly. Cter looked to Huvtvao’s reaction, but there wasn’t any grimacing from the smell. The two-headed butler knew how to hide his emotions when needed.

“It has the slight musk of summer sweat, but it is in no condition near what the Royal Mage lets his sleeve deteriorate into. I say, some days I suspect it is on the verge of collapsing into rough slabs of leather. Like the pillows in his room after his dog got a hold of them.”

Dog?

“The Royal Mage had a pet during his inauguration that unfortunately lost itself during his travel to Monster Country,” explained Huvtvao with eyebrows sunk from surprise to solemn. “From what I understand the dog had been restless beyond hope when Terri traveled here for his inauguration. It hadn’t managed to settle down properly and see this castle as home before the newly-inaugurated Royal Mage had to travel to Monster Country for an audit with Monster Princess Frioke.”

“Since it was an even longer trip the Royal Mage put trust in me to look after the dog,” continued Huvett as Huvtvao exchanged some words and orders with a nearby guard. “It wasn’t really accustomed with the monsters here so all it did was stay in the Royal Mage’s room without letting anyone else in. Constant whimpering persisted for a day or two before we assumed that the dog had calmed down.”

“But it had run away?” Cter hazarded while nodding a greeting to the guard bowing his way past her and Huvett and Huvtvao. Did explain some things between Terri and the butler, it did. Cter didn’t have a pet of her own, but she had met humans and monsters who had. A rather even percentage across both species. Something around a sixth or seventh of the humans and monster she’d happen upon, so to speak. Those that she took time talking with. “I’d imagine the Royal Mage being quite heartbroken and betrayed because of that?”

Terri’s broken heart wasn’t really difficult to imagine for Cter.

His magic was another story though. That Cter couldn’t empathize with so easily as she could him losing a pet. She could call upon a similar situation when she felt heartbroken and betrayed in her life. His magic though, and from where he drew upon it? How as well, perhaps more importantly. That was a bit more difficult.

In the same sense that building a castle was a bit more difficult than a house.

“He keeps his hair spiked with his ice magic so that his dog can spot him from a crowd much more easily. That as much he has been willing to share with me. Not much more, I’m afraid. You’ll have to ask him about it.”

While it was true that pouring salt on ice helped with melting, it was still a wound Cter was to pour salt into. Even if it was that of ice the negative memory would be too much. Too much emotion.

Too much…

It couldn’t be though, could it?

“About the Royal Mage’s magic?” Cter asked to either head. The one that wasn’t the busiest was fine. It was Huvtvao who swiveled around on his thin neck to give her the attention while Huvett kept eyes in front to navigate the corners needed to Cter’s room. She had begun to recognize some of the paintings hung on the walls. Not clearly though, but in a blurry, tipsy haze from Priestess Frioke’s memories of when she visited the castle. “More specifically his sleeve?”

“It is the same sleeve as he had before he became a Royal Mage, albeit with some added enhancements by Priestess Frioke. The nature of the enhancements though I do not know about. I did not notice a change in his magic from before and after his visit to Priestess Frioke though. He is more confident in his magic, sure, but that I chalk up to her accepting him becoming the Royal Mage of Hjearta.”

It didn’t sit well for Cter to prod as to exactly how Huvett and Huvtvao didn’t notice the shift in Terri’s magic. She had to know though if he meant it in terms of Terri’s aura. It was important for her to understand how the Royal Mage of Ice’s magic worked.

She breathed in slowly.

“In what way did you not notice the change in his magic? Specifically, did you not notice a change in his aura?”

The spear on Huvett and Huvtvao’s side rustled in its belt-strapped carry as the butler stopped in his track. His four, strong legs had his stop be more abrupt and sudden compared to a human’s. There was a visible shuddering throughout his body. One of anger, but suppressed by rationality. He had to convince himself quite rigorously though. However, if there was one in the world who could convince himself of anything, it was Huvett and Huvtvao. He had already convinced himself to become human, so how much was Cter poking at his sore monster side in comparison?

“With all due respect...Monster. Mage.”

Oh…

Quite a lot, actually!

“I don’t ask this lightly,” Cter defended with a respectful motion of regret of her sleeve across her chest for a bow. “Trust me in that, please, Royal Butler.” She held her bow to show that what she said she meant. Cter regretted having to ask, but she had to. It was important. What Huvett and Huvtvao answered could mean the future of the humans and the monsters. Cter could not divulge that to him though. She could not because she respected his position and what he had dedicated himself to become. His determination to become the mirror of a Monster Mage. If she could not accept that Huvett and Huvtvao was human then how could she accept herself being monster?

Still, she had to know.

“Were there no change in the Royal Mage’s aura after his travel to Monster Country compared to before the travel?”

Huvett and Huvtvao met his own gaze with a dense air of confliction between his heads. Dense enough to have his necks collapse from the weight of it. Cter was wringing something out of him that he didn’t want to acknowledge.

“I’ve left my monster side behind, Monster Mage. Please, do respect my decision.”

“And I have left behind my human side,” Cter replied with empathy overflowing. “I also know that your dedication to the humans is without compare, even compared to us Monster Mages’ dedication towards monsters. However, there are times in my life now where I have to be human. Those times are seldom, but they are.”

“It is difficult enough being human among humans without you plucking at the few loose threads of monster I still have left, Monster Mage. You have already made me talk like I used to, and separating myself again is gonna require an hour or two of quiet contemplation.”

Even as he said it with indignation he wasn’t wholly dismissive of what Cter had asked. More so, it was as if he was lamenting his burdens. Not like the Village Elder dumping her problems onto Cter though. It was a lament to someone who could understand his burdens. Someone who, while not in the exact same boat as him, were close enough that the stormy weather was the same for the two.

“For as much as I love humans there is always the first initial suspicion and disbelief to what I am. To what I want to be, and what I have dedicated myself to be. Humans don’t do different very well. Humans want what they already have. What they are familiar with. What they don’t have to spend any thoughts and efforts to make familiar. I’m not talking about humans and monsters and that difference. To humans monsters are not-humans. That’s what’s familiar to them. That’s what categorized nicely. A monster being human though?”

“Or a human being monster.”

Huvett and Huvtvao’s heads shook in unison to Cter’s comment. To her it looked eerie as she had seen his heads as two ever since he introduced himself to her. While she had it easier than most to accept that, the human still went about his introduction and demeanor so naturally that once he reverted to his old self it was as if talking to someone completely different.

In a way it really was.

“Not to discredit you or your colleagues, Monster Mage, but a human becoming monster is different from a monster becoming human. With your aura you can convince every monster before they even lay eyes on you. Your soul is like a constantly-visible document with a sigil, stamp, and signature from King Asgore and Queen Toriel that you are indeed a monster. That all monsters can feel and see without the slightest thought or hesitation.”

Cter’s fascination over Huvett and Huvtvao was overflowing. Overflowing to the point where she spoke without thinking.

“Even you?”

Because she was all monster in that moment. It was all from her soul.

It had Huvett and Huvtvao averting his heads and eyes with a pained grimace that touted his disappointment in himself.

“I did...”

The confession reverberated throughout his body like a mighty quake. The ornate spear at his side shook as if it was about to be dropped. There was a slight tinder inside the cried disappointment though. A minute flicker of hope.

“I thought it would help if I could gauge how your soul and aura was, Monster Mage. A shameful indulgence that I forced myself to feel. If I could understand how a Monster Mage’s soul was in its nature perhaps it could have helped me become more human? Looking into the mirror of what I have achieved to become better.”

It was with fellowship for a fellow monster that Cter expanded her aura. “Do you-”

“No!”

For a fellow monst…

No, no that was wrong.

Cter cursed herself for doing that. “I’m sorry,” she said with a plea. “I...I let my emotions take over. My soul, not my head.” Her hand clutched, snuffing out the glow in her spiraling line. She had to focus! Huvett and Huvtvao was looking to her as he once was in confidence. She was about to break that confidence. Focus! “Please forgive.” It was confusing to Cter with her soul and head saying different things to her and leaning both ways without any patterns she could get used to. Rocking back and forth in the unstable boat.

If it was that difficult for her just listening how difficult was it for Huvett and Huvtvao to live it?

“It’s...fine. I’m used to it.”

Not in a positive way though…

There was a quiet moment between the monster and the human. A moment for them to remind themselves internally who was who.

“I shouldn’t have done it. I shouldn’t have felt your aura. The subtle taste I got of Kallorean’s aura as he saw his squad and general perform his magic was too tempting though. Too big a reminder of what I had sacrificed to become human. Once I indulged myself in that, even if it was as teeny as I was able to, it was all overwhelming once you began your magic, Monster Mage. A colander’s holes may be small, but they won’t do anything if a dam bursts on them.”

The Monster Mage was at an impasse whether or not to apologize for that. On the one hand she felt that she had to as it was clear in Huvett and Huvtvao’s expression that he was still feeling that Cter did him wrong by trying to comfort him via her aura. On the other hand though it wasn’t her fault that he decided to indulge himself in Kallorean’s aura despite knowing that Cter’s magic was next in line.

Her head, not her soul. That’s what she needed.

So she didn’t apologize.

“And now I’ve gone back to the monster I was because of that.”

It was with eyes like a confused child that Huvett and Huvtvao looked to Cter for her thoughts. Not with his aura though. That he still suppressed. He wanted to hear her answers as the human he wanted to be, and not the monster he once was.

Perhaps…

Perhaps Cter didn’t need to understand Terri’s magic after all. Maybe the answers she sought were with Huvett and Huvtvao? For that though she needed his aura. She had to have him open up to her as a monster too.

“You have felt that you’ve betrayed yourself before, today, and you will in the future too.” If Huvett and Huvtvao was direct with Cter she was gonna be direct with him too. “There have been times when I have been human as a Monster Mage. At the time it felt strange and wrong having to be a human when I was supposed to be a monster. As if I betrayed the ones that put faith in me being a monster. Same with you but supposed to be a human.”

Huvett and Huvtvao nodded in unison.

“It’s not a betrayal.”

With patience and calm Cter waited for Huvett and Huvtvao’s furrowed brow to be smooth again.

“It’s the opposite of a betrayal, Royal Butler.” The Monster Mage clutched her sleeved fingers into a cylinder which was filled with cyan magic that grew in length until it reached the floor and her head. “For an example that’s not us.” With a tap of the conjured staff onto the floor the magic bent into a shallow, hyperbolic shape which she tossed up and grabbed in its middle. “Do you think of monster hunters as not monster?” A string of light-blue magic connected the two bent ends, giving them tension which Cter plucked like a harp on the magical string. She let the note play out before she had the conjured bow slide down her grip until it stood on the white marble below. Cter folded both her hands on its top while she let an inquisitive look take over her face. “How do you see their intent as?”

While Cter didn’t strike a chord with Huvett and Huvtvao since the string only produced one note, she did had his brows hung low in thought. The shadows in the folds of his foreheads were retreated due to the glow from Cter’s bow.

“You’re asking me about the killing intent, aren’t you, Monster Mage?”

An arrow of orange magic formed in Cter’s hand, laying spread across her sleeved hand which she kept moving to have it not fall through her. “That I am.”

The shadow-less folds became slightly worried to what exactly Cter was planning.

“W-We have some monster hunters providing meat for the castle. During my...let’s say formative years, I never really noticed a change in their auras despite the many game they had fell.”

With the string constantly gyrating with small, rhythmic tugs, Cter notched the orange arrow onto the light-blue string. The odds of the two magics conditions created an unmistakable sizzle that Cter let sparkle wildly. The loose hair on the right side of her head settled in front of her eye as she tensed the light-blue string to ready the orange arrow. “So intent is important for what your expression of the situation details? To the point where it is,” Cter pulled the arrow back just before her nose, “paramount?”

Everything was up to Huvett and Huvtvao whether or not Cter was gonna loose the magical arrow pointing directly at Huvett and Huvtvao’s torso. She was showing her full respect to him by her display. He was an equal to her, so she would use everything she could to help him. She was backing up her words with her actions.

“Yes.”

But would he?

“Correct.”

The note plucked by Cter releasing the magical arrow was different than when she plucked the naked string. Bathed in a sunset-orange, the distance between Cter and Huvett and Huvtvao was quickly covered. It took less than the simulated heartbeat inside Huvett and Hutvao’s chest before the sharp tip punctured him.

He could run.

Or he could stay.

He knew the condition for orange magic was. Move and it wouldn’t hurt. Move and it would go through him like he was air. Otherwise it would connect with him. Right where Cter had aimed it. Straight at his magical heart. She didn’t know archery, but she did know magic. Her shot was true.

Huvett and Huvtvao didn’t move though. Even as the sunset color drained from the bright marble around him he didn’t move the barest of an inch. The arrow punctured him as any normal arrow would. Like a human shooting a human.

Cter cocked her head to the side to let her hair out of her face. She lowered her bow, tapping it on the floor once again before dissipating it and letting it fade away in a faded cyan color. Before it was fully faded she plucked at the magical string one last time.

“You understand what I mean now, Royal Butler.”

That Huvett and Hutvao didn’t move spoke louder that he did than any of his words could ever.

“You will only truly betray your dedication when your intent is to,” Cter said just in case. Her voice did also sound very nice with the echo of the hallway she was in. The marble was different from that of Jarasevo Castle, which surely was the reason why. “You did not peek with your aura at Kallorean’s because you wanted to throw away everything you had done up until that point. No, you peeked because you wanted to further understand. To feel how a human that wasn’t a mage utilized magic. That may not have been what you thought, but it is what your soul did. Your soul as human as mine is monster.”

The hallway’s color returned to its natural, sunlit bright, with the monster and the human stood their respectful distance away from the other, taking it what had just transpired. The small contingency of guards passing by just outside the large windows facing the courtyard were none the wiser. They would relieve the ones on shift without the slightest clue that the visiting Monster Mage had just shot the Royal Butler with a magical bow and arrow.

“Thank you, Monster Mage.”

The many tears that fell onto the castle floor were thick and spread out.

“Anytime, Royal Butler.”

And...there it was.

Huvett and Huvtvao’s aura. A last goodbye from his monster self towards the Monster Mage that said what he needed to hear. Along with the aura came the answer to Cter’s question. Among the many emotions which Huvett and Huvtvao had discussed with himself about to angle more human than monster.

No, Terri’s aura didn’t change before compared to after his visit to Jarasevo Castle.

“My apologies if it feels a bit anticlimactic after what you did.”

Not really, no.

Cter only needed to know if it was or wasn’t the case with the Royal Mage’s aura. Something she could work with. With her knowing that his aura hadn’t changed she could put weight of her theorizing correctly. For that she would have to sit down and write a bit though. Get some of those weighty thoughts down onto paper. “Shall we continue our merry way, Royal Butler? Not to butt in on your buttling.”

“Yes.”

“Follow me, please.”

“Monster Mage.”

Cter stepped to the side to let Huvett and Huvtvao lead the way. Not far enough that she couldn’t touch him with her sleeve and save some of his aura that still lingered. She saved it as a tiny Cooperative Connection for when she was able to take notes in a bit.

With each corner Huvett and Huvtvao led Cter, the more and more she began to recognize from Priestess Frioke’s visit. It came to a point where Cter turned the corner the same time Huvett and Huvtvao did. The last couple of turns he wasn’t leading her anymore, but instead they were walking together. Once they arrived at the room Priestess Frioke had, Huvett and Huvtvao took his last couple of long steps to reach the door and hold it open for Cter.

“This room is quite special in regards to human magic, Monster Mage.”

The joy in Huvett’s voice as he bowed and motioned for Cter to enter was so genuine Cter decided not to spoil it by saying that she already knew that.

For the moment.

“You see, this was the room where Priestess Frioke stayed in during a visit to Fenkeep Castle that would come to change the world.”

It was as if time had frozen since Priestess Frioke’s visit. The same furniture and the same bed in the same positions. The same window showing the same trees. Cter had to look at her own hand to make sure that she was herself and not Frioke in that moment. It was quite uncanny how preserved it was. All that was missing was a bottle of mostly-drunken mead and a monster looking out the window with her long ears swaying like the dances she had just done.

Beautiful, it was.

Cter was happy to be there.

“I will give you some time to make yourself comfortable, Monster Mage,” Huvtvao informed with a nod towards her luggage tucked behind the opened door. “In the meanwhile I will check on today’s itinerary to see if there has been any changes. I will be back in half an hour or so.”

“Would you like it in writing when I return?”

“Please, and thank you,” Cter said to the Royal Butler who bowed. “Could you send for a bottle of...Royal Mead, was it?” She thought for a second, letting the memories of Priestess Frioke wash over her briefly. “Yes, Royal Mead.” While she walked over to the table where Frioke had sat before Cter took out her journal from her robe to begin writing down some of her theories about Terri’s magic. “I’d like to indulge in the wonderful view she did when she visited.”

A stunned silence filled the room. Huvett and Huvtvao was speechless. His eyes wide and taken back.

A fair reaction from the Royal Butler since…

“You’re only human, after all.”


	10. Fighting the night

“I implore you, sir! You need to rest up!”

“I’ll sleep when I’m not needed, Sarbor!”

The arm blocking the door frame leading into Dr. Sallus’ disorganized office did not bunch no matter how far back the monster doctor’s white ears bent. Lit with orange by the quick Sunset out his office’s wide window, they slid down the back of his head as he looked up with a stern stare at the mustached human preventing his exit out his office while stood at a very awkward bend, yet still firm and decisive against letting Dr. Sallus out the door.

“You know full well that there will never be a time when you’re not needed, Sallus,” his apprentice scorned back at him with a tiredness sinking his eyes that was worse than Bonny’s. “Let us apprentices take care of the night while you rest up. If needed we’ll call up the soldiers again and-”

With a sudden explosion of angry wrinkles, the fluffy and white bunny nose turned sourer than puss. “We are not risking more human lives, Sarbor!” His roar was that of a lion. “We already have military personnel in the morgue, and God knows that is gonna be a damn mess to get sorted out afterwards due to Clinic Hill’s balancing between Monster Country and Xoff jurisdiction.” A streak of weak fire followed his angry slash upwards, liking against Sarbor’s hand accidentally and forcing him to retreat it to his mouth in reflex. Bonny did not take the opportunity though to sneak past. He was too proud to take advantage of such a backhanded trick, even if it was an accident. “No, the soldiers that remain down at that temporary station are for transport and nothing more. They are already risking enough without us asking them to throw their lot in further in a situation they have no damn idea about.”

The burn on Sarbor’s hand was that of just grabbing a cup of tea that was hotter than expected, so his hand returned to blocking Sallus’ path before the monster doctor had finished speaking. “You’re not willing to risk soldiers that have sworn and dedicated their lives to protect their country but you are willing to risk the lives of civilians and peasants that have come to you pleading for your help by not sleeping?” Sarbor’s eyes hardened as best as they could with such tired eyes tugging him face down into a hanging mess of angered emotions. “It’s been days, Dr. Sallus. Not only that, but it has been nights as well. You’re making mistakes.”

“I’m still saving more by being awake than I am being asleep.” The small tail whipped as best as it could. “And you apprentices and the nurses are there to catch those mistakes when I do them.” 

“So you admit to your decisions are compromised due to lack of sleep.”

Oh for…

“It’s just statistics at this point, Sarbor.” Bonny’s finger rubbed at his nose between his eyes. It felt good to have them closed. Too good, in fact. He had to stop rubbing and open them up, but even he could feel that they opened too slow to not show the extent of his tiredness. He could barely muster up the slightest of cold magic inside the palms of his hands which he pushed up to his face to help him wake up. Despite him not being of flesh and blood it still worked because he believed in it. There had even been some signs that it worked as a remedy with him accidentally just giving tea rather than an actual remedy to some of the plague-struck patients and then seeing an improvement in their condition. If the patient just believed that something would help them heal it looked as if it had an effect. With it working with Bonny too perhaps it meant that it was something from the soul? 

Nothing he could experiment further with though while both the brick houses were fuller than anyone could ever have imagined. The plague killed quickly, but not quick enough that the neighboring villages couldn’t bring their sick ones in hopes of being treated. The plague killed though, as it had the last time it was casting its deadly veil over Xoff. It killed even worse to boot, almost as if it had become stronger during its absence. It didn’t make sense. It had just become…

“Statistics,” Sarbor sighed in empathy with his monster teacher. His hand budged for a brief moment from pressing against the door frame, but only for a moment. He leaned in more with his shoulder, pushing it even harder and sturdier. “Already it has become just statistics...” Even without an aura there was an air of tired despair hanging over the tall human. His mustache which always gave him such a proud presence hung his face even more heavily. Even the colorful orange which pushed itself through the wide window could not light it up. “Last time we did not reach that point until the plague had begun to ease down. The worst was over when it became just statistics.”

If only Bonny’s magic was strong enough that he could have given his apprentices enough magic to have Cooperative Connections. “Now the worst has only begun, I’m afraid, my apprentice.” If only his own magic was more directly relevant instead of indirectly through multiple steps. “And it is because I do not know when exactly the worst will hit that I can’t rest.” If only he didn’t have to rely on a child to use healing magic in his stead. “I need to be awake for that.” If only… “I must be.”

If only everything.

“I want to say that I understand you in that, Bonny, but my heart still believes fully that you are making a mistake, and as your apprentice I am here to help you correct that.” Sarbor let his stained and apron-dressed length stand above Dr. Sallus once again in the door frame. “I do not believe that the state that you are in is the best for the humans that you have sworn to take under your care, and for that I again implore you to rest until you can be awake enough to uphold the hope that you have promised your patients. Please, Bonny.”

The monster doctor’s tired eyes met his human apprentice’s even tired ones once again.

“I beg of you, with all of my heart and soul.”

He…

“Rest up for the sake of your patients.”

Sarbor spoke of his soul!

“You need it.”

He...he never spoke of his soul. Not even among his monster colleagues. He must have been desperate to plead with his magical side as well as his human one. Was he that desperate to get Bonny to sleep that he would throw away every bitter thought he had against human magic? 

The shock had the monster doctor stumbling backwards with his eyes blinking in disbelief. He knew fully that Sarbor said it to tell how deeply he felt about the situation. He knew fully that it was a trick of the rhetorical kind.

Yet it worked.

Because Bonny believed in it.

Even if he did believe in it though it wasn’t a cure, but merely a remedy for a few symptoms. It was experimental, a wild guess that hopefully slashed tangentially at the true answer.

A risk.

A gamble born out of lack of other options that did not bring a satisfactory conclusion, only an unbalanced impasse that did not budge no matter how much was thrown at it.

A trait that Dr. Sallus’ apprentice wore like a badge.

“Sarbor.”

Gambles cost lives though.

“I will not rest until I alone make that choice.”

Lives that could have been saved using known and proven tactics.

“For as much as I trust your judgment, I trust mine more.”

Tactics that have managed to keep the brick buildings merely full and not overwhelmed.

“Where that fails is where you and your colleagues pick it up. That is where your judgment comes in, and not before. Sleep is less an importance for a monster compared to a human, and the fact that I have to remind you of that is worrisome.” Dr. Sallus’ ears stood up, reaching over Sarbor’s hanging mustache. “And while I appreciate your thinking of me as human it is not applicable during this time of crisis where we need to be focused on what has been proven to work.”

“Like sleep,” came an instant response from the apprentice that still would not budge despite his teacher’s explicit order and authority. “Sleep has been proven to bring back lost energy in monsters even if it is less important than for a human.”

Dr. Sallus ears fell back again and he again pinched the bridge of his nose from underneath his glasses. His closed eyes did not feel comfortable though. “You could have spent time preparing for relapses and a new wave of sick humans arriving next morn. Hell, you could have gotten some sleep yourself, Sarbor. Yet you keep yourself standing here in my way impeding me to do my job.”

“I am doing mine,” Sarbor repeated with just as much conviction and tall posture. “To boot, I am here on the request of all the others. Of all the other apprentices and nurses that work for you. They have all voiced concerns over your lack of sleep, and have sent me to convince you. I am the one with the short stick here among my colleagues, Sallus. I am not asking them to do the impossible, they are asking me,” he finished off with a point down the dimly-lit hallway empty of humans nor monsters.

“Calling it impossible for me to consider getting some sleep is ridiculously hyperbole even if it is correct.” Bonny’s eyebrow shot up as did his respective ear. “I will once I trust that the situation will be capable with my absence, but not before that.”

With a blink, Sarbor eyes went from challenging to averting, wandering off towards the large bookcase covering the left wall of the office. “It’s not you getting some sleep that we consider impossible.” He shook his head slowly, as anything fast would have him faint. “That is me prioritizing that you should be wide awake for the impossible.” Sarbor tilted his head down towards his teacher. “The other apprentices and I have come to the conclusion that this plague isn’t cause by miasma.”

It hurt again when Bonny closed his eyes again with a deep inhale through his nose and a slow exhale through his disappointed mouth. “Sarbor,” he stated still with his eyes closed. “Why, in this time of great medical strife, are you colluding against me?” Bonny wasn’t angry with his apprentice. “Why, when the methods we are applying are proving as efficient as can be expected considering the circumstances, are you impeding me trying to save more humans?” He was disappointed, however. “Why, when your colleagues are looking to me for strength and wisdom, do you plant seeds of doubt that has them growing suspicion against the one that’s taught them?” There was a time and a place to approach other angles of approach. “Why, Sarbor, do you not trust me?”

But it wasn’t when Bonny was needed more than he’d ever been needed before!

Again he has to say that to his best apprentice!

“So me getting sleep was so that you could formulate yourself better in order to try and convince me, no?” Bonny continued to press with the rim of glasses drowning inside the wrinkles on his nose. “This short stick of yours you don’t trust yourself wielding and hence you needed time to formulate better that my proven theory of miasma is incorrect?” His white hand again swept the air between him and Sarbor, but with no magic following it. Bonny’s emotions were in check.

Sarbor’s clearly wasn’t.

“The testimonies from the sick humans contradict the miasma theory,” Sarbor replied after his flat hand against the door frame curled to grip it. Even with that there was still a pleading desperation in his voice. “They have spoken about relatives getting sick in villages where none previously had and where they were preventing any source of miasma from building. The river villages have been infected despite the wind blowing the other way.” Sarbor paused for breath. As he did, his fingers curled even deeper into the wood as Bonny’s expression remained neutrally disagreeing. “And some of the relapses here have been inside the rooms with the positive pressure. The rooms were checked afterwards and found nothing wrong with the air system. From the slim communication we’ve had a sketch has been drawn that this plague is caused by something else than miasma.”

Dr. Sallus pushed his slid-down glasses back up his nose with a slight sigh that spoke of his frustration more than his words could ever. “Are you implying that the same disease with the exact same symptoms from the previous plague has changed itself so drastically that it is no longer covered by the miasma theory yet still acts the exact same way?” Words still helped Bonny to express his confusion though.

Sarbor’s eyes softened. “This is why I wanted more time to formulate myself,” he said like an apology. “I firmly believe that there is something different than miasma causing this plague, and I did so during the previous plague as well. At the time though I could not run any experiments, and in between I did not find any other examples which supported my suspicion. Now though, with even some of the nurses and other apprentices noticing that something is amiss, I am now convinced that there is something else!” His conviction flared up through his other arm as well, which came up to grip at a blood stain on his apron over his heart. “The miasma theory is wrong about the plague, Dr. Sallus!”

The desperate voice echoed throughout the three-storied house and out into the early night that descended silently over Clinic Hill. The deep orange that had painted Sarbor’s face with light shadows became more and more darker as the quick Xoffian night rushed to replace the lively orange with a bitter dark-blue which emphasized the deeper shadows underneath his eyes. 

Bonny watched the harsh breathing of his apprentice for a few of the nightly-bitter moments that passed between and around them through the wide office window. “And what do you suggest we do about it, pray tell?” he then posed with a gentle, yet authoritative tone to his voice. Again he watched his apprentice, but no answer came to the question posed to the human apprentice to the monster doctor. “How much time should we spend searching for this specter of yours? How many lives should we set aside for you and your colleagues to chase a solution born out of stress and finding hope where you feel that none exist?” Neither with the next. “I do not choose to continue the course in this stormy weather because it is easy, Sarbor.” Bonny placed his hand on his chest. “I choose to because it is the hardest decision to make. To stick with the statistics is the most difficult choice I can make in my situation. How we treat the sick humans with what has been proven to give the most efficient recovery, and not the flashiest or headline-grabbing.”

Sarbor looked away again.

“Believe me, my apprentice, I would be the one most excited about the miasma theory being proven wrong, but we can not prove it wrong right now.” Bonny knew exactly where Sarbor were coming from. After all, he hadn’t become as knowledgeable as he was just by reading books. He’d seen all the ways a human could die plenty. “The symptoms are too dire for us to give effort to the underlying cause should it be different than what we have already established.”

Dr. Sallus didn’t know it firsthand though. Despite all of his after and all, he was still a monster treating humans. There was still a disconnect, even if it was small. Maybe it was what had him pushing against Sarbor wanting to explore the plague being caused by something other than miasma, but even if it was that fact, Bonny still needed to stick to his monster choice against his human apprentice. Wavering would have been worse than putting his large foot down.

“There’s only really one experiment I am willing to go through.”

An experiment which pertained to both the potential of another underlying cause as well as the disconnect.

As Sarbor realized what Bonny meant he was the one to argue against. His hanging mustache curled up as his lips thinned into a dismissive scowl which had him shake his head against his teacher and employer. “The Monster Mages changing your magic is even riskier than pursuing another angle to the plague’s origin, with all due respect.” His hand disconnected from the door frame and was thrown vaguely towards where Monster Country was located. “On top of that they are foreign military. They were invited by you personally, yes, but as you said, it is inviting the Monster Mages from Monster Country territory in Monster Country to Monster Country territory in Xoff. Last time they visited the plague was under control, but right now it isn’t.”

“I made sure to leverage my influence and some favors to clear the road that they were supposed to travel on,” countered Bonny with a tightened brow and sharp angle to his ears. “Do not let your bias against human magic get in the way, Sarbor.” Just as how Bonny could not understand firsthand how it was to be human, Sarbor could not understand firsthand how it was to be monster. Bonny was betting his very soul on the Monster Mages changing his magic to make his magic better.

It had become imperative.

A dire situation was still dire, even if it hadn’t blossomed beyond what even Clinic Hill was capable of. Dr. Sallus was jaded, that he would never spout as false, but that jaded nature he needed to have as without it…

Without it he would have been like Sarbor.

No offense to his best apprentice, of course.

Even though it is what Bonny has done the entire evening, really.

“Singe my soul...”

Maybe he did need some sleep.

“I don’t like repeating myself, especially when I’m asking something from someone else,” said Sarbor underneath his breath as his teacher rubbed his eyes for the third time. The first time he did the sun was plenty visible outside the wide window, but at the third time the orange had turned into a darkened blue heeding the arrival of the silvery moon about to cast a brighter, yet also dimmer, light through the window at the human and the monster struggling in their ever-difficult effort to save whatever lives they could. “However I hope that you’ve at least seen why I am worried and where I am coming from with those worries. You taking a good night’s rest will say to us that you’re calm enough about the plague to do so.”

There was a long silence between the two which told Sarbor plenty enough. “If only it were so,” Bonny sighed into the floor with his ears folding over his head. “If only it were so, Sarbor.”

The silvery glittering that followed the moon’s rise brought with it a sigh from Sarbor as well, but not fully. Halfway through it, his eyes blinked with a surge of focus which had him turning into the hallway. “That’s not the moon,” dripped from his mustache. His monster teacher leaned his head out too, his ears stood up and reaching just below Sarbor’s wrinkled forehead. “Is it magic?” he commented towards the fluttering glitter that tapped quietly against glass, illuminating the otherwise-dim hallway with silvery rays dotting the walls, floor, and ceiling, moving around with each tap. 

Bonny traded a glance with his apprentice before the two set off down the hallway towards the locked entrance. They didn’t speak a word, as their minds were busy with thoughts about what magic it could be knocking at the door in the beginning of the night?

“A scroll?” reacted Sarbor as his long legs brought him to round the hallway corner a few steps before his teacher. He waited for Bonny to arrive at his side, and the two stood still staring at the floating scroll tapping again and again at the glass on the front door. 

“A magical scroll,” Bonny corrected while still as confused as his apprentice. “With the Monster Royal stamp on it too!” 

Could it have been? 

“Let it in, Sarbor!” said Bonny hurriedly while wafting his hand towards the locked doors. “It has to be,” his emotions then spoke for him as his apprentice fished up the keys from his pocket. “It must be from the Monster Mages!”

A pause, small yet noticeable, came to be between Sarbor putting the key into the lock and then turning it. Even so, he still let the magical scroll in, which promptly ignored him fully and instead floated over to Bonny’s outstretched hands. The magic from the scroll tingled at his fingers as it settled its slim weight inside his excited, furry palms. “It is!” he shouted eagerly. “It’s from Cter! I can feel my own magic from it!” Like a child with a new present, the monster doctor opened the scroll with all haste, discarding the broken seal on the floor in his hurried eagerness. His eyes darted left to right with all haste, and his smile grew each time his eyes lowered to another row. 

The smile was hidden from Sarbor though. “What does it say?” Not for long, however, as when Bonny lowered the parchment from his face, his smile shone brighter than the moon did in its silvery glory outside the opened door. The cold night air was enough to have Bonny’s extended ears fall behind his head.

“It says-”

His relieved cough threw thick tears from his eyes which dotted the floor around the broken and discarded purple seal.

“It says that I can sleep tonight, Sarbor.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading a pick'n'mix excerpt of my next big story!
> 
> I have been writing it now for little more than a year, and it will take around a year too to complete it. Reason being that I plan to also create another story that will run parallel to the written one. I haven't finalized the written story yet, and as you can probably tell in a few places in these excerpted chapters things are in a first or second draft stages, hence why I'm putting the goal of releasing next year somewhere this time of year. 
> 
> If this little excerpt piqued interest you can find out more on the [The Fanfic Paradise Discord channel](https://discord.gg/sXVXy7w) where I have a room.
> 
> Hope to see you there!
> 
> And belated happy 5th anniversary, Undertale!


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